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ft 



NIE ELIOT 


CONDON 


COPYRIGHT 1888 BY O.M. DUNHAM 


IS of CHOICE FICTION. 


tered at the Post Office, New York, N. Y., as Second Class Matter, May 11. 1888. 


APRIL 1, 1889. 







“MAKE HAY WHILE THE SUN 
SHINES/’ 

Clean your house betimes, and do it with 


SAPOLIO. 

If you would use Sapolio every week in the year 
the dirt in a house would be kept down and when 
house-cleaning time came it would be a pleasant 
task instead of the dreadful time it usually is. No 34. 







AN HOUR’S PROMISE 





ANNIE ELIOT 


1 . 




Rosalind. “ Break an hour’s promise in love ? ” 

— As You Like It. 


.9h 


CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited , 

104-106 Fourth Avenue, New York 


Copyright, 

1889, 

By O. M. DUNHAM. 



Press W, L. Mershon & Co., 
Rahway, N. J. 


AN HOUR’S PROMISE. 


CHAPTER I. 

One that knew courtship too well, for he fell in love. 

— As You Like It. 

If two lives join, there is oft a scar, 

They are one and one with a shadowy third. 

— By the Fireside. 

The train kept on its weary way through 
the Southern forests. It was well it was 
not a sentient thing to battle with the dis- 
couragement of such miles of monotony. 
A spirit of high endeavor would go near to 
being crushed by the long-continued pres- 
ence of those draped, moveless trees, knee- 
deep in muddy water. Leslie Owen laid 
down the book he was reading, and, for the 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE, 


hundredth time, leaned forward and gazed 
out at the gaunt trunks and branches. As 
he did so, he was conscious of a sense of 
positive discouragement regarding the fut- 
ure of the colored race — it did not seem 
much use after all. Were these not the 
same woods they had passed yesterday af- 
ternoon ? The same festoons of gray moss 
dragged from the limbs — only festoons was 
not the word to use, festoons seemed to 
speak of merrymaking — but perhaps this sky 
was grayer, and this water a shade muddier. 
Then he threw himself back and looked 
at his traveling companions. He knew 
them all by this time, having traveled two 
days in their company — knew them enough, 
that is, for all practical purposes, which, in 
Leslie Owen s case, was by no means exten- 
sive. They were not very interesting, or- 
dinary types most of them. An old lady 
and a middle-aged one were in the next 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


3 


compartment, both of them well-to-do, 
knowing quite well what alleviations rail- 
way traveling is capable off, and insisting 
upon not being deprived of them. At 
the various stations where the passengers 
stopped for food, they were always well 
waited on. There were one or two men, 
like himself, alone, with whom he now 
and then exchanged a few words. There 
were two girls, with their father and 
mother, who, he felt sure, were happy in 
having no annals. He was conscious of no 
temptation to disturb their happiness. 
Across the aisle were two people who had 
afforded him some amusement. They were 
evidently on their wedding journey. Nei- 
ther of them was very young. She had 
evidently been a school-teacher who had a 
gift for conversation. Owen suspected that 
it was this gift that had finally won for her 
the affection of her companion, so respect- 


4 


AJV HOUR'S PROMISE. 


ful and admiring was his present enjoyment 
of it. “ There is an Eden-like simplicity 
in a man’s admiration for his wife’s more 
elevated forms of conversation,” thought 
Owen cynically. He glanced across at 
them now. The man had just met a friend 
in the smoking-car and had brought him in 
to enjoy his own intellectual pleasures. 
Not that the bridegroom smoked — Leslie 
had ascertained that — but he occasionally 
walked through the car devoted to that 
pursuit, returning to mention having '‘been 
in the smoker,” that his wife might not 
fancy she had married a man ignorant of 
the more advanced sort of worldly gratifica- 
tions. “ He has acknowledged his wife’s 
superiority, once and for all,” thought Les- 
lie Owen again, “but a man must be ex- 
pected to make up for it somehow.” 

The presence of the friend acted as a 
spur to the bride’s consciousness of power, 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE, 


5 


as her husband had been sure it would. 
They had touched on the subject of Sab- 
bath-breaking. Something, he did not 
know what, had proved a failure. 

“ It is because they have to work on the 
Sabbath,” Owen heard her say. “ Nothing 
ever meets with full and useful develop- 
ment, that necessitates labor on the Sab- 
bath. It has ever been thus. Look at 
France. How has she descended from her 
lofty estate ! Look at the empires of the 
world.” 

The husband cast furtive, self-congratu- 
latory glances at the friend. “ You see,” 
they said. The friend, who belonged to 
the same somewhat inferior social scale, 
was much impressed. He gazed vaguely 
out of the window, as if to note, at her sug- 
gestion, the empires of the world. But 
there was nothing there but the trees and 
the moss and the muddy water, to which 


6 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


Owen, too, had turned again. He felt that 
he admired this woman who could see the 
empires of the world, even with her mind’s 
eye, in the face of such an actuality. 

And it was into the midst of this sort of 
thing, that Robert Morton had come to 
die. That was the thought that came ever 
uppermost in Owen’s mind. It was this 
which deepened the gloom of sky and for- 
est, and bred a fierce impatience with the 
apparently unchanging scene. He had 
been told there was little hope. Should 
he get there in time ? — that was all. In all 
probability he would ; men did not die of 
such a fever in a day, but meanwhile he 
might be with him, he felt, listening and 
watching, instead of fretting at the delays 
of passage through this accursed country. 
Owen pulled his mustache savagely, and 
glared out more moodily than ever. They 
seemed to be nearing some sort of a settle- 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE, 


7 


ment now. There were glimpses of lonely 
roads here and there. 

Was it to some such place they had 
brought poor Robert ? Robert, his best 
friend, who had lived down here for five 
years, and laughed at the dangers of the 
climate, only to be stricken down at last 
with a blow from which there seemed no 
rallying, even for his strength and will ! 

The train paused in front of a wooden 
platform. Two or three negro cabins were 
scattered about. In the distance, through 
the trees, appeared the walls of a large, 
deserted-looking dwelling-house. To the 
right the road stretched, lonely and wind- 
ing, over the flat, wooded country. Night 
was coming on, the gray sky showed rents 
of crimson in the west, but the sun was 
going down in clouds. In front of the 
nearest cabin were four little darkey girls. 
The eldest, a mature individual of perhaps 


8 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


five years, vras singing, and the little, child- 
ish pipe vi^as audible through the car win- 
dow. The refrain seemed to be a some- 
what remarkable statement, physically con- 
sidered, perverted from its original camp- 
meeting use : '' I’se dot my soul in my 
right han’.” 

The two next in age were dancing to this 
serious accompaniment, their little black 
heads bobbing up in time to the orchestra, 
the little black legs keeping step beneath 
the hem of the short white garments they 
wore. Apart, on the doorsill, sat the 
youngest of all, a very small darkey in- 
deed, gravely watching the performances. 
She did not seem carried away by enthu- 
siasm ; on the contrary. Her observation 
was evidently nothing if not discriminating. 
It had not yet come her time to dance, but 
when, in course of years, it should, she flat- 
tered herself the dancing would be better 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


9 


done than that. These were the only in- 
habitants of the settlement who did not de- 
sist from their employments when the train 
came in. 

Directly in front of Owen’s window was 
the store, evidently also the post-office for 
this district, for an attenuated mail-bag was 
carried over there. Before the door was 
the one incongruous figure in the scene. 
This figure, slender and graceful, in strong 
relief from the background of general shift- 
lessness, was that of a girl on horseback, 
whose horse moved somewhat restlessly to 
and fro. This motion displayed her re- 
markable grace, her perfect ease in the sad- 
dle, and in the curve of her arm, the turn 
of her shoulder, her touch on the bridle, 
was implied a certain strength, which 
spoke of training as well as natural apti- 
tude. She did not glance toward the train 
as she waited, but tapped her dress with 


lo AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 

the handle of her whip, watching the 
indolent post-master, not altogether impa- 
tiently, but as one who is in haste and 
knows no possibility of communicating the 
emotion. Apparently she was entirely un- 
conscious of the long line of windows with 
the faces looking out with easily awakened 
interest. She bent forward, still watching 
the postmaster as he went within, and un- 
locked with much ceremony the unprom- 
ising leather bag. The engine was taking 
in water, which gave Owen time to see all 
this. Now it began slowly to move on, 
but it had not passed out of sight before, 
looking back with persistent interest, he 
saw her turn away without a letter, and, 
urging her horse to a rapid pace, ride 
down the road into the shadows. As she 
passed them, the little darkey dancers ex- 
ecuted a pas of surprising difficulty, with 
what might have been abandon but for its 


AM HOUR'S PROMISE. 


II 


solemnity, and Owen fancied he distin- 
guished through the rumble of the cars 
the soft refrain : 

“ I’se dot my soul in my right han’." 

He felt a touch of sympathetic regret. 

Probably the mail is her one excitement,’' 
he thought, settling himself back into his 
seat, and watching the negro porter, as he 
lit the lamps, whose rays intensified the 
twilight darkness without. Late the next 
day he reached the Southern town where 
Morton lay. They had brought him so far 
north from the little place on the Indian 
River, where he had been taken ill. It was 
his feverish impatience that had accom- 
plished this, the physician wrote ; it had 
seemed better to yield, than to try to quiet 
him where he was ; there he but grew 
worse, day by day. There were delays 
that seemed never ending to Owen’s fret- 
ted soul as they drew near his destination, 


12 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


in the soft night air. He remembered 
something about the approaches to the 
Southern towns having been found difficult 
by the Union army. He was not surprised, 
since in times of peace and undisturbed 
signals and extended railways it was 
necessary to pause and retrace so much of 
the way, every now and then. At last he 
was off the train and being driven through 
the dim, perfumed streets. Here and there 
along the way, bright lights shone from 
open doors and windows, glancing on the 
glossy orange-leaves. It was late, but 
within the doors of a large hotel, standing 
near the road, there were gay voices and 
music, which floated forth to Owen’s ears, 
as he passed quickly by. He had come from 
frozen roadways, chilling winds, and gray 
skies, to out-of-door laughter and midsum- 
mer starlight, and the sadness of his errand 
marked more impressively the contrast. 


AJV HOUR'S PROMISE, 


13 


He left the lights of the short street, and, 
as the carriage rolled on over the sandy 
road, where there were no longer houses 
and open doors, the driver suddenly pulled 
up his horses — no very difficult matter — 
and a voice said : “ Is Mr. Owen, of New 
York, in this carriage?” 

“Yes,” said Leslie quickly, leaning over 
the low door of the “ barouche.” 

“ I am Dr. Fenn,”said the voice, as a tall 
figure outlined itself in the gloom. 

“You have not come to tell me — ” said 
Owen, with sudden dread. 

“ That you have come too late ? No,” 
said the doctor gravely. “ Thanks,” as 
Leslie swung open the carriage-door, “ I 
will go back with you. Your friend is no 
worse than he was several hours ago, but 
that means that he is a very sick man. He 
has failed much in three days, but I think 
you will find him conscious. He asked for 


14 


AN- HOUR'S PROMISE. 


you, quite rationally, half an hour ago, and 
when you were expected. You can talk to 
him freely. He is quite aware of his dan- 
ger, and it can certainly do him no harm 
to relieve his mind of what he wishes to 
say to you — while he has the strength to 
speak.” 

Leslie was silent a moment. 

'‘You are very good. Doctor,” he said, 
“ to come and let me know the state of 
things in advance.” 

*• Not at all. I had intended to meet 
you at the station, but was detained. I 
knew you would not want the delay of 
explanation, after you reached the house.” 

Dr. Fenn was a tall, dark man, with eye- 
glasses. The calm, even quality of his 
voice suggested confidence. Owen felt 
that everything must have been done for 
his friend in the best way possible. 

“ He said there were no friends except- 


A A’’ HOUR'S PROMISE. 


15 


ing you for whom he wished to send,” 
began the doctor again, a few moments 
later. 

No ; Morton is singularly alone in the 
world,” replied Leslie. “ He had one 
brother who was killed at Cedar Mountain. 
Robert was in the same regiment, but 
escaped.” They turned in at a gateway, 
and drove between groups of palmettoes 
and spears of Spanish bayonet to the door 
of a large Southern house. 

I was fortunate in procuring so good 
quarters,” said Dr. Fenn, as he led the 
way indoors. '‘The owner of this house 
is a friend of mine, and put his entire 
house at my disposal.” 

Owen went directly upstairs. There 
were dim lights in the hall. Here and 
there a negro servant appeared noiselessly. 
The passages were sweet with out-of-door 
perfumes. As he entered the sick-room 


i6 AA^ HOUR^S PROMISE. 

Robert Morton’s eyes turned toward the 
doorway, brightened with pleasure. 

'‘ I knew you would come, old boy,” said 
a very low, feeble voice. And Owen 
stepped to the bedside and laid his hand 
on his friend’s. His first impulse was that 
the doctor had been mistaken ; for though 
nothing had been said directly of results, 
he felt that he had understood him to 
mean that but one was possible. Morton’s 
eyes were so bright and rational, his voice, 
though weak, so sustained, that he felt that 
here there must be some rallying power. 
But the impression passed ; it was but the 
calm following the anxious, fretting struggle 
of the last few days — it was not strength. 
For some time nothing was said. Morton 
seemed satisfied with the fact that it was in 
his power to speak when he should choose. 
He turned feebly on his pillow and seemed 
to sleep, while Owen sat quietly by the 


AN HOUR^S PROMISE. 


17 


bedside. At intervals he would wake and 
speak a few words. Sometimes they re- 
ferred to the days they had spent together, 
to past associations, sometimes they were 
a few brief directions about what should be 
done in the future. Little by little he 
seemed to free his mind of what it had 
seemed so imperative he should attend to, 
but as the night wore on the words grew 
more broken and the pauses longer. Occa- 
sionally the doctor entered, administered 
a sedative, whispered a few words to Owen, 
and went away again. 

A little after midnight Morton was 
lying quietly, and Leslie walked over to 
the open window and looked out into the 
darkness. From the distant hotel came 
the last strains of a waltz; softened by 
distance, away from all accompaniments of 
blazing lights and whirling figures, it was 
like music falling softly from another 


l8 AJ\r HOUR'S PROMISE. 

sphere. An old moon, with its pathetic 
suggestions, glimmered on the horizon, the 
scent of the orange-blossoms seemed to 
cling and penetrate. There was some- 
thing illusive, almost theatrically delicious 
about the music, and the perfume, and the 
pale moonlight. It was as if he had come 
into another world where there could be 
nothing as harsh and positive as death. 

“ Leslie,” said Morton’s voice, sounding 
a little clearer than it had for some time. 
Instantly Owen was by his side. ** I have 
not told you that I am engaged.” 

“ No, you have not told me,” repeated 
Owen mechanically. He was very much 
surprised. 

I should have told you very soon in 
any case,” went on Morton. “ Now, I 
must ask a service of you. It is that 
chiefly that I have wanted you for ; to do 
what no one else can do. I want you to 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


19 


write to her — when some one must write 
to her. You had better do so in any case, 
to-morrow morning. I should have asked 
you to write to-night, but no mail goes till 
to-morrow at ten.” 

He spoke slowly, with long, breathless 
pauses. 

'' But she has been written to — ” 

No, she does not even know that I 
am ill.” 

Poor girl,” said Owen involuntarily. 
A shadow passed over Morton’s face. 

'' Yes, poor girl,” he said, “ but I meant 
it for the best.” 

'' And I have no doubt it has been for 
the best,” the other answered gently. I 
see no reason why not.” 

I wanted to push on till I was near 
enough for her to come and take care of 
me ; but I failed in that. And it was out 
of the question for her to come so far. 


20 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE, 


And I wished to spare her unnecessary 
anxiety — that was at first — so I said noth- 
ing. Then I grew worse, and I was deliri- 
ous, and there was no one to write — and it 
seemed to be too late.” 

“ I see.” 

“There was no one but Dr. Fenn I 
could trust, and though I could trust him 
perfectly, I did not wish him tO’ know — 
he comes from thereabouts.” 

“Yes.” 

“ I see I was wrong, now, for she has 
been wondering at the reason of it all. 
She has been riding down every day for a 
letter, poor child, and there has been none 
for her.” A thrill of tenderness passed 
over the sick man’s face. “ None at all — 
for nobody else ever writes to her.” 

Like a vision there passed before Owen’s 
eyes the forlorn post-office, the dark strag- 
glers before its door, the girlish figure on 


aAt hour^s promise. 


21 


the restless horse, waiting — in vain — and 
then the loneliness of the same girlish fig- 
ure as it went on up the darkening road. 
Perhaps it was in some such scene as 
this, that the woman Morton loved had 
waited. 

'' I have told you where to find my 
will,” he went on, his breath growing short- 
er, “ I have left it all to her, except the 
little that is yours — for old acquaintance’ 
sake, you know— I know you have enough 
without. Another provision I must trust 
to you verbally. Dr. Fenn has done 
everything, he has proved the sort of man 
one meets not often — then in his direst 
need.” 

Then followed a few murmured words 
in relation to business affairs. 

Owen had always admired his friend’s 
grasp of business, the details of property 
and its manag'ement ; his head seemed 


22 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


wonderfully clear now. When he had 
finished, he fell back exhausted. Leslie 
gave him the restorative Dr. Fenn had 
ordered, and he breathed more easily. 
Owen’s hand was steady, but there was 
a tense look about his mouth which told 
of rigid self-control. This was the third 
night he had passed almost without sleep, 
and it was his best friend that lay dying. 
Morton opened his eyes. 

“You are sorry, aren’t you, Les. ?” he 
said, with what seemed the old boyish in- 
flection. It was too much. He dropped 
his head in his hands a moment. “Yes, 
you are sorry, and so will she be sorry. 
You two, that is about all.” 

Owen felt a throb of jealousy at this. It 
seemed an intrusion, this mention of her as 
one with him in suffering. This girl, of 
whom he knew nothing, and whom Robert 
must have known but a little time. God 


AN HOUR’S PROMISE. 


23 


knew how much they had been to each 
other ! 

Say me the ‘ Prospice/ Les.” 

How often they had quoted it in the old 
days ! With a voice that hardly trembled, 
Owen repeated Browning’s beautiful lines : 

“ I was ever a fighter, so one fight more, 

The best and the last.” 

He paused an instant after that, and 
Morton smiled. When he had finished, he 
saw that his eyes were closed and that he 
breathed more easily, so he leaned back in 
^is chair with his hand over his eyes and 
waited. He had not to wait long. Once 
Morton’s lips moved. Owen leaned over 
him, “ With God be the rest,” he was re- 
peating. Dr. Fenn came in as the gray 
light of the morning grew warmer, and 
together they stood silently as Robert Mor- 
ton went quietly from one sleep to another. 


CHAPTER II. 


He was ever precise in promise keeping. 

— Measure for Measure. 

It was ordained to be so, sweet. 

— In a Gondola. 

By daylight, Dr. Fenn was seen to be 
a younger man than Owen had fancied the 
evening before. In fact, Leslie had been 
so absorbed from the moment of his arrival 
that he had made few observations outside 
of the imperative needs of the sick-room. 

He realized, now, however, that he had 
been impressed from the first by a calm 
and decided personality, an absence of all 
fussiness or obtrusiveness of any kind, 
which he had associated with the experi- 
ence of an older man. Apparently Dr. 
Fenn was not yet thirty, so he concluded 


24 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 25 

the next morning. He was a long, dark 
Southerner, good-looking in an indifferent 
sort of way, his indolent Southern intona- 
tion contrasting with the somewhat terse 
form of his professional and business-like 
statements. Without a trace of officious- 
ness, he was of the greatest assistance in 
all the arrangements that Owen had to 
make. When it came to the question of 
his own remuneration, he firmly put aside 
all the generous proposals that were made, 
and persisted in treating the matter on the 
strictest business principles. He had been 
instructed to spare no expense in the va- 
rious arrangements for moving and estab- 
lishing the sick man, and had fulfilled his 
instructions, and for all these expenses he 
was prepared to furnish memoranda. For 
his professional services he would make the 
usual charges, and would accept nothing 
further. Owen urged the fact that the case 


26 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


was most exceptional, that he had gone 
from place to place for the sake of a stran- 
ger, and that Morton, and he himself, felt 
under a heavy debt of gratitude. 

“ It was all in the day’s work,” Fenn said 
with his lazy smile, and he went on with 
that absence of consonants which makes 
life seem an easier thing south of Mason 
and Dixon’s line, to say that he had been 
traveling without an object save the re- 
establishment of his own health, which had 
suffered under an attack of malaria ; that 
consequently it was an easy thing for him 
to go from one place to another, and that 
there wasn’t any law against a man making 
his living in the easiest way he could — any 
more than there was any obligation incur- 
red in letting him. He reckoned there 
weren’t any Northern views of state rights 
that were going to controvert this. Then 
he smiled again. In thinking over their 


AN- HOUR'S PROMISE. 


27 


interviews, Owen could not remember that 
he had seen him smile except those two 
times. His ordinary expression was that 
of a not unamiable gravity. Evidently 
his own affairs were the only ones that 
could be appropriately dismissed with a 
smile. Morton had had no wish that his 
burial-place should be at the North, so 
all arrangements were made for the fune- 
ral there where he died. Everything 
that Owen could do had been done — 
except one thing, and an hour before the 
mail closed Owen sat with his pen in his 
hand prepared to do this — to write the 
letter announcing Morton’s death to the 
woman who was to have been his wife. It 
would not have been under any circum- 
stances an easy thing to do, but in the 
present case it seemed to Leslie doubly, 
trebly hard. She was an entire stranger 
to him, he could not judge what would be, 


28 


HOUR'S PROMISE. 


for her temperament, the easiest way to 
break such a blow. She had had no 
preparation whatever, unless Morton’s long 
silence had prepared her. He fancied 
she had few interests, few friends — no 
one else ever writes to her,” Morton had 
said. However he might word it, he felt 
that he should be doing a brutal thing, 
and Owen was a man peculiarly averse to 
brutality where women were concerned. 
He could not rid himself of the picture of 
the girl he had seen at the station — he 
had forgotten the name of it. Would 
she ride down, as that girl had done, and 
ask for a letter, after so many fruitless 
rides, so many long days when there had 
seemed but one event to look forward to, 
to look back on, the arrival of the mail ? 
Would the lazy postmaster hand it to her, 
after scanning curiously the superscription, 
and she, grasping it eagerly, would she 


AN- HOUR'S PROMISE. 


29 


be warned by the strange handwriting ? 
Would she tear it open in sight of those 
good-natured, idle, interested faces, or 
would she turn away and ride some dis- 
tance up that lonely road before she dared 
break the seal? He pictured her disap- 
pearing around the curve, a slender, grace- 
ful figure, going into the shadows with her 
terrible grief. Owen had a very acute per- 
ception of emotional phases. He threw 
down his pen with the half-formed inten- 
tion of going himself to tell her. It was 
a dreadful thing for a woman to bear such 
a blow as that alone. He glanced at his 
watch, before he recognized the impos- 
sibility of departure. He had lost fifteen 
minutes, and that letter must leave at 
twelve o’clock. It was the injunction of a 
dying man. He took up the pen again, 
and then he remembered, what in the press 
of other matters he had forgotten, that he 


30 


AJV HOUR'S PROMISE. 


did not know her name. He knew he 
could find it in one of Morton’s papers, 
but he disliked to begin the work of look- 
ing over letters or memoranda, while his 
friend was still lying dead upstairs. The 
fragrance of the doctor’s cigarette came in 
through the open window, mingled with 
sweet aromatic scents. Should he ask him 
if he could throw any light on the subject ? 
He was curious to know if Morton had 
mentioned her in his delirium. Then he 
remembered Robert’s objection to asking 
the physician to write for him. He had 
known her, he said. Probably there were 
some complications of secrecy. There was 
nothing to do except to look for a letter or 
address, and he rose and went up to the 
room where most of his friend’s posses- 
sions had been placed. He found easily 
a package of letters bearing postmarks of 
recent dates, neither was it difficult to de- 


yiAT BOURNS PROMISE. 


31 


cide which were from the woman he wished 
to address. There were two or three of 
them, mailed at intervals of several days, 
and directed to Mr. Robert Morton in a 
feminine handwriting, somewhat unformed, 
but by no means characterless. Owen 
paused with the first one in his hand, 
startled by the name of the place written 
on the outside, in the straggling characters 
of the postmaster, as a primitive post- 
mark — Embree, Ga. Surely that was the 
place where the train had stopped for 
water, and where he had watched the de- 
livery of the mail. That was the girl 
then — he had felt it from the first — it 
could not be anybody else. He glanced 
at the signature,: 

Yours, my dear Robert, affectionately, 
Altamera.” 

What an odd name, and not of much use 
as an address, but probably all that was 


32 


A AT HOUR'S PROMISE. 


necessary for identification. There were 
no other letters in a woman’s script. Owen 
took up a memorandum-book, and glancing 
over the leaves found a page of addresses. 
There were a number of them, but he re- 
cognized the one he sought for. Miss Alta- 
mera Clayton, Embree, Ga. He had 
found what he wanted, and laying aside 
letters and book with the instinctive rev- 
erence we feel toward inanimate things 
never to be touched again by their owner’s 
hand, he went downstairs to write. Dr. 
Fenn was still smoking in front of the 
house, where a Mardchal Niel was opening 
its creamy buds in the warm air. He 
looked up from his magazine as Owen 
passed the window. 

'‘The boy is waiting to take your letter 
when you get ready to send it,” he said. 

" It will be ready in twenty minutes,” 
answered Leslie. 


A AT HOUR'S PROMISE. 


33 


The doctor nodded, knocked the ashes 
off his cigarette, and returned to his article 
on germs. Leslie took up his pen for 
the third time with resolution. It was 
harder than ever to write the letter now 
that the blow was to be dealt at a flesh 
and blood reality, rather than an idea, 
but it must be done immediately. It was 
a little difficult to know how to begin. He 
finally decided on, “ My dear Miss Clay- 
ton,” rather than any more formal mode 
of address. It was the most natural, and 
seemed more friendly — it might be some- 
thing to her to know that even a stranger 
was moved to friendliness. Somehow he 
fancied her lonely and to be rendered es- 
pecially desolate. He never found much 
difficulty in the way of expressing himself, 
and it was only the second sheet that he 
folded and placed in its envelope. This is 
what he had written : 


34 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


My Dear Miss Clayton : 

‘‘ My relations with my dearest friend, 
Robert Morton, give me a right to ad- 
dress you. It was his wish that it was 
from me that you should learn what a 
loss has fallen upon you — a loss that I 
shall share, though in a different degree. 
There is nothing that I can say that will 
make what I have to tell you anything but 
a bald announcement of a terrible fact. 
Robert was taken ill less than three weeks 
ago, since which time he has grown almost 
steadily worse. Last night he died calmly, 
undisturbed save by regrets on your be- 
half. He had put off letting you know of 
his illness, in the vain hope of sparing you 
pairr, hoping that he might reach a place 
where it would possible for you to meet 
him. Delirium intervened, before he real- 
ized the futility of this hope. Last even- 
ing, on my arrival, I found him capable 
of leaving with me all messages and 
directions, among which the most impor- 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE, 


35 


tant were concerning you, of whom he 
spoke with the tenderest affection. The 
funeral will take place to-morrow in this 
place. I defer, until after that, any fur- 
ther communication beyond the fact of our 
great loss 

Believe me, with respect and sympathy. 
Yours, 

“ Leslie Owen. 

‘'To Miss Altamera Clayton.” 

He felt very tenderly toward the girl 
his friend had loved, as he walked toward 
the door with his letter. It sounded cold, 
perhaps, but surely demonstrativeness was 
out of place. It was singular, now that he 
thought of it, that he had no positive 
message to deliver ; no last words which 
he might repeat to her as deliberate testi- 
mony that Robert’s heart “ was faithful to 
die as live.” It had been like him to send 


none. 


36 AN HOUR*S PROMISE, 

Where is the boy you spoke of ? ” he 
asked the doctor from the doorway. 

“ Madison,” called Dr. Fenn, and an 
aged but still vigorous negro appeared, 
and touching the hat which would have 
seemed insufficient protection in any but a 
tropical country, took the letter and dis- 
appeared. 

Owen went back and threw himself into 
a long lounging-chair which stood by the 
open window. It was the first time that 
he had had to think, and his heart grew 
heavier with the sense of his loss. Yes, it 
had been like him to send no last message. 
He had never been a demonstrative man, 
though an intense one. Morton had been 
several years older than Owen, but they 
might have stood shoulder to shoulder 
through perils that the older man had 
passed through alone, so fast had been 
their friendship. Owen, who had moods 


AJV HOUR'S PROMISE. 


37 


of finding his own character unsatisfactory, 
sometimes said that the best thing about 
him was Robert Morton’s friendship for 
him. He had felt at one time that he 
knew his every thought and shade of 
feeling, and though they had been sepa- 
rated for the last few years by distance, 
there had been no cloud over their in- 
timacy. 

For this reason, the announcement of 
the engagement had been a shock. He 
would not have believed that Robert would 
so long have left him ignorant of so mo- 
mentous an experience. Besides, he had 
known all about Robert’s other love 
affair — he had had but one. That had 
been so long ago, and he had seemed so 
entirely to put aside all thought of senti- 
ment with tho hope of that stormy time, 
that Owen had ended by believing that a 
man may sometimes love but once — a 


38 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE, 


theory entirely foreign to his usual experi- 
ence. She had been a handsome woman, 
that other ; was a handsome woman now. 
He sometimes doubted that it was all 
her fault that she and Robert were 
parted. With all Robert’s impassiveness 
he had been a tremendously sensitive 
man, and he might easily have misunder- 
stood. But certainly the look of things 
had been against her. There was no 
object in going back to that old time, 
however. Robert had loved again — he 
wondered if it were more wisely and less 
well. 

Dr. Fenn strolled into the room to find 
another book. Owen liked, better and bet- 
ter, the look of his long, dark figure and the 
sound of his musical voice. He watched 
him as he moved about the room without 
speaking, looking for what he was after, 
with his cool intentness of manner. No 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


39 


wonder Robert had liked this man. Had it 
been a mutual attraction ? 

Fenn had never betrayed anything be- 
yond a professional interest in his patient, 
but it seemed impossible that he should 
not have recognized his strong claims to 
something beyond that. Owen followed 
him as vhe left the room, and sat down by 
his side in the shade of a bitter orange- 
tree. 

When the next day was over the two 
men left together on the night train going 
further south. Owen was obliged to go to 
the place where Morton and Fenn had met, 
and where the former had been taken ill, 
to see the lawyer, with whom had been 
left the will of which he was executor. 
Dr. Fenn was returning there to make a 
longer stay. By the beginning of the fol- 
lowing week Owen was again in the train 
traveling through the dreary swamp land 


40 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


of the Southern States. He had left in 
the lawyer’s hands all arrangements to be 
made with Miss Clayton. He had thought 
at first that he would stop at the station, 
whence he could be driven to her house 
and see her, but had decided that it would 
be better not. She might consider it an 
intrusion, and in the little note with which 
she had answered his communication there 
was nothing that betrayed any wish to see 
him and learn more of what only he could 
tell her : 

“ Dear Mr. Owen,” (it began) 

I have often heard ” (here she had 
written “Mr. Morton” and erased it) “ Rob- 
ert speak of you. I can not believe that I 
shall never see him again. It is too dread- 
ful. I have been very, very anxious, but 
this news is worse than anything I had 
thought of. I am very, very glad that you 
were with him. It was better to have you 
than anybody ; Robert would have felt it 


AJV HOUR'S PROMISE, 


41 


SO. I can not write any more now, for I 
feel too badly. Yours very truly, 

Altamera Clayton.” 

Leslie had been touched by the almost 
childish tone of the letter. Poor little 
girl ! It had been hard for her to write at 
all she felt so badly. Evidently all was 
confusion and grief within her mental 
horizon. He hoped some time he should 
see her, and meanwhile he could always 
hear of her through the lawyer. For 
Robert s sake he should never lose sight 
of her. He had written to her a second 
time, stating briefly their relations through 
Mortons will, and giving her his New 
York address, where he hoped she would 
call upon him if he could ever be of 
service, for the sake of the man to 
whom they had both been so near. The 
second day of the journey homeward, 
as they approached the clearing where 


42 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


Stood the little post-office, with its neigh- 
boring shanties, he grew restless. Finally 
he rose and walked to the platform, where 
he stood as the train drew up beside the 
apology for a station. There was a slight 
rain falling, and there were no stragglers 
sitting about the post-office door ; they 
were occupying boxes just inside, and 
watching with interested solemnity the 
ragged official who crossed over deliber- 
ately for the mail. It was unavoidably 
suggested that when there was no train 
coming in these observers entirely lacked 
active employment. Two of the little 
black performers had disappeared, but the 
second one — one of the dancers — who had 
evidently an eye not only for artistic 
effect, but for commercial advantage, stood 
awaiting the train with a bunch of yellow 
jessamine. A grave little ebon figure 
clothed with a single garment of white 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


43 


cotton, which had the advantage, unshared 
by more elaborate toilettes, of being un- 
harmed by the rain, she stood, holding up 
the shining, yellow blossoms, which seemed 
to borrow brightness from the surround- 
ings. But nowhere in sight was there any 
horse bearing a graceful rider, no glimpse 
of a woman’s dress, though Owen strained 
his eyes up the winding road. He tossed 
a coin to the solemn little figure, which im- 
mediately unbent, and as the train moved 
on he returned to the car with the fragrant 
mass in his hands, realizing that if she had 
been there the train, in all probability, 
would have gone on without him. As 
long as there was any trace of road or 
clearing he gazed out of the window, but 
in vain. He had felt sure that he should 
not see her, he told himself. Poor child. 
Her letter had come — and no one else 
ever wrote to her. 


CHAPTER HI. 


If we do meet again, why, we shall smile. 

— Julius CcRsar, 

There were certain ways when you spoke — 

— Too Late, 

I SUPPOSE there will not be enough 
men,” said Miss George, leaning back in 
her chair, and tracing unnecessary de- 
signs on the blotting-paper. Miss George 
was a tall, handsome woman of thirty- 
five, with black, heavy hair, splendid dark 
eyes, and a creamy skin. There was a 
suggestion of energy in her quietest atti- 
tudes, but not of restlessness ; she rested 
as successfully as she did other things. 
Her companion, on the contrary, adapted 
herself to the curves of the deep, luxuri- 
ous chair in which she was seated, with 


44 


4vV HOUR'S PROMISE. 


45 


an apparent indolence capable of thwarting 
the most spirit-stirring influences. 

She was idly fingering the heavy tassels 
which fell by her side as she watched Miss 
George at her work of making out a list 
of invitations. She smiled in reply to this 
observation, but evidently had nothing to 
offer by way of suggestion. 

“To be sure, there never are enough 
men in these latitudes,” went on Miss 
George, as one who is willing to take life 
as it is, after all. “ But it seems as if I 
ought to be able to think of others. In 
the first place there are those that one 
always asks — I have them all down ; then 
there are those one does not ask unless 
one has to — I have most of them,” and 
she drew her pen slowly down the list she 
had made out. “ Then there are those 
that one likes to have, but to invite whom 
necessitates more or less of a compro- 


46 


A AT HOUR'S PROMISE. 


mise with one’s dignity — I have several 
of this class — shall perhaps end by having 
them all — those who never call, you know, 
and don’t care to talk to one at balls. I 
don’t think of any new men just now — 
which is the final division.” 

“ Do you know Mr. Leslie Owen ? ” 
asked the girl in the arm-chair, with the 
sweet, drawling intonation that betrayed 
the fact of her Southern origin. 

“ Why, yes ; do you ? ” and Miss George 
looked at her companion in surprise. 

“ Oh, I don’t really know him,” she re- 
sponded tranquilly, but I have heard of 
him.” 

Lots of people have heard of him — 
particularly girls. He has knocked about 
so much that he has friends in every State 
of the Union. But I am surprised, Alta- 
mera, that you know him, because you said 
you didn’t know anybody.” 


A AT HOUR'S PROMISE. 


47 


The girl’s eyes had grown grave, as she 
still gently swung the tassel to and fro, 
and she did not answer immediately. 

“ Well, I reckon I don’t know him,” she 
said at last. 

I had Leslie down once,” continued 
Miss George, returning to her list, ^^but 
struck him off because — because I was not 
sure he was in town, I think ; but if you 
know him, he is worth a trial,” and she 
scribbled his name on her sheet of paper. 

“ I’m sure you needn’t ask him on my 
account,” objected Altamera. 

I am very glad to do so, child,” an- 
swered Miss George. “ I do not know 
why I hesitated ; I sometimes do when I 
have not just seen him. If I have, he 
goes down as a matter of course.” 

There was silence for a few"" moments 
while Miss George completed her work. 
In the year that had passed since her lover 


48 AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 

died, Altamera had changed very little 
from the unconscious girl whom Owen had 
watched from the car window. She was 
exceedingly pretty. Her fair hair waved 
on her forehead very nearly to the line of 
her clearly marked eyebrows, except when 
she pushed it back as if annoyed by its 
weight, when the short, thick locks fell in 
confusion over her temples. This careless 
treatment of her hair was characteristic. 
There was about her always an entire ab- 
sence of regard for possible effect. Her 
blue eyes, over which the eyelids drooped 
slightly when she was quiet, were always 
raised when she was addressed, with a 
charming attentiveness. Her mouth and 
chin did not lack firmness, but were not 
obstinate. 

“ Leslie Owen,” began Miss George, 
somewhat thoughtfully laying down her 
pen, “is an interesting man. I do not 


A AT HOUR'S PROMISE. 


49 


think I am misled by any personal emotion 
if I say he is fascinating. As far as I can 
remember, and my memory for such facts 
is still keen — Leslie Owen has never bored 
me. That is, if he only knew it, in itself 
something of a triumph. Yes,” she added, 
as if to herself, I always do Leslie Owen 
justice.” 

“ Are you easily bored. Cousin Lena ? ” 
asked Altamera. 

“ Oh, very easily. And what is more, 
it is something I will not put up with. 
When people bore me, even my most 
intimate friends, I abandon them and get 
a new set. When you begin to bore me 
I shall send you right straight back to 
Georgia. I shall be polite about it, you 
know, but go you must.” 

Altamera smiled with sweet indolence. 

“ I believe I will,” she drawled. 

Miss George boasted of her inconstancy. 


50 AJ\r HOUR PROMISE. 

Possibly the faith of her friends in her de- 
votion was greater than her own. 

On the day of the party Altamera was, 
for her, a little restless. This restlessness, 
to be sure, consisted in nothing more than 
one or two objectless journeyings from one 
room to another, a vague way of looking at 
a book, a question now and then about the 
arrangements for the evening. But for 
Altamera, whose indolence was a positive 
quantity, only to be interfered with for 
good and sufficient reason, these slight 
signs constituted restlessness. She was 
dressed, and waiting in the reception-room, 
half an hour before there was a pos- 
sibility of arrivals. Miss George, who 
was as rarely too early as too late, 
came in and found her there with sur- 
prise. 

“ I expect you think I’m in a sure 
enough hurry for this party, Cousin Lena,” 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


51 


Altamera said, smiling. Well, I don’t 
want to lose any of it.” 

It was late when Leslie Owen entered 
the room. As he waited an instant before 
he could speak to his hostess, his eyes fell 
on a new face. Not an unusual experience 
in a city drawing-room, but this was an 
unusual type. Its owner stood before a 
heavy, dark curtain, slowly swinging a 
large, round, feather fan. Her dress was 
quaint with a quaintness other than that of 
a fashionable affectation. Leslie decided, 
with some masculine diffidence, that it 
was the cut of the thing that made it seem 
a bit more old-fashioned, than that of the 
beauty just beyond, Miss Stanforth, whose 
high-shouldered gown belonged to a pe- 
riod at least a century earlier. The man 
who was bending over this unconventional 
girl was evidently permitting himself to 
be entertained. This was all he had 


52 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


time to observe, for Miss George was ready 
to welcome him, and there was a pause 
in the arrivals so that he could talk 
with her for several minutes. 

My cousin has met you, or heard of 
you, or something,” she said, with some 
indefiniteness, after the exchange of a few 
remarks. 

I am happy to have received even 
such very vague attention,” he replied. 
“ I am afraid that it is that she has met 
and forgotten me.” 

I do not know — perhaps it is. She is 
rather an unusual young woman. It may 
be that she is capable of forgetting you. 
Do not say that she has, you hope, fur- 
ther claims to originality than that.” 

“ Miss George always expresses one’s 
ideas so much better than one can one’s 
self,” said Owen, smiling. 

'‘lam forgetting my duties,” she went 


AJV //OC/JrS PROMISE. 


53 


on, turning with him to another part of the 
room. “ I am afraid, do you know, that 
you are the sort of man to make a woman 
forget her duties.” 

“ I am very sure that I never make you 
forget yours,” said Owen, answering her 
half-satirical glance. 

They paused before the girl with the 
old-fashioned gown. The large, round fan 
stopped waving, and the young man looked 
around as if he considered the appearance 
an interruption. 

''Alta,” said Miss George, "let me pre- 
sent Mr. Owen, — my cousin. Miss Altamera 
Clayton.” 

As Leslie bowed, a rush of recollection 
came over him with an overpowering sur- 
prise. He raised his head to meet the 
glance of blue eyes which had a little 
amusement in their depths and a good deal 
of frank curiosity. He lost, for an instant. 


54 AJV HOUR'S PROMISE. 

the sense of a lighted drawing-room ; he al- 
most fancied he caught a scent of orange- 
blossoms — no, it was jessamine, she had 
some in her dress. For almost the first 
time in his life he had nothing to say. It 
was she who spoke first. 

I expect you are surprised enough to 
see me here,” she said. 

How he liked her Southern voice. “ I 
am so surprised,” he said, that it 
seems absurdity to tell you so.” 

The young man, who had been listening 
to Miss Clayton, felt that she had met an 
old friend, and left them. 

'‘And is it really the Miss Altamera 
Clayton ? ” asked Owen stupidly. 

“Yes,” she replied gravely, “ it is the 
Miss Altamera.” 

And that was the only reference that 
either of them made to the past. Never- 
theless this past was continually in Owen’s 


AJV HOUR^S PROMISE. 


55 


mind, at least. It was a visionary back- 
ground against which he saw her pretti- 
ness and took note of her personality. 
He felt as if Robert Morton were 
there, observing the impression that the 
woman he had loved was making on 
his friend. He wondered if it were this 
thing or that, that had fascinated Robert. 
Before the evening was over he felt that 
it might have been half a dozen things. 
He decided that her simplicity had had as 
much to do with it as anything else. That 
other woman had been a very complex sort 
of person. Altamera made most people 
appear complex, he concluded. Evidently 
it had never occurred to her to ascertain 
what it was the best thing to think on any 
given subject before she made up her 
mind. He had heard of the refreshment 
of bringing an utterly inexperienced in- 
telligence to bear upon old questions. 


$6 AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 

He felt that Altamera would afford 
this. 

Have you met Miss George’s cousin ?” 
asked Antoinette Swift, as he stood lean- 
ing over her where she sat, just inside the 
conservatory door, which framed for them 
the low reception room. One could hardly 
fail to notice Miss Swift’s profile wherever 
she was. Leslie remarked it now: her 
long eyelashes, her straight little nose, 
her perfectly rounded chin, were singular- 
ly pretty, as she turned her head to 
look after the subject of her question. 
She was not a great beauty, but she car- 
ried herself well, and a certain poise 
which marked her whatever she did made 
her a noticeable girl always. She dressed 
perfectly, with apparent simplicity, but 
it was not the simplicity that a tyro 
might venture to imitate. She did not 
live in New York, but visited there 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


57 


often. Owen had met her only once or 
twice. 

“Yes, I have met Miss Clayton,” he 
said. 

“ I remember now, I saw you talking 
with her. She has an odd name — Alta- 
maha — what is it ? ” 

“Altamera.” 

“ Oh, yes, Altamera. Did she tell you 
it was the name of the place in Georgia 
where she was born ?” 

“Yes, she told me.” 

“ I thought it was nice of her to say it 
was in Georgia,” went on Miss Swift 
thoughtfully. “ For I should never have 
known.” 

“ She did not mention the State to me,” 
said Owen, smiling, “and I was entirely at 
sea. I hope, if she discovered my igno- 
rance later, she will not set it down to a 
culpable indifference to my country.” 


58 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE, 


I am always a little afraid such igno- 
rance may suggest to a Southerner an ill- 
meant reference to the late rebellion — a 
contemptuous want of interest. I feel 
that my sensitiveness is over-done, how- 
ever — more than theirs is likely to be.” 

Miss Swift spoke in low, even tones, 
with very little animation but with admi- 
rable distinctness. 

“ I fancy Miss Clayton is not one of that 
sort,” observed Owen. 

“ No, I fancy not. I think she would 
have mentioned it, if she were. She told 
me about her name, and that she had never 
been North before, and that she rode a 
great deal, and that she did think North- 
erners were a little cold. I think she is 
charming. She is diffusive. I wish more 
of us were diffusive.” 

Leslie wondered if Altamera had men- 
tioned her engagement to Miss Swift. 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


59 


Miss George, undoubtedly, had been in- 
formed of all the circumstances. It was a 
singular state of things. What he said, 
however, was on a different key. “ I am 
thirty-two years old,” he announced ; “ my 
education has been somewhat neglected in 
the higher branches, particularly geogra- 
phy. I am a civil engineer, and a fairly 
good tennis player. I am exceedingly 
fond of nautical pleasures, as represented 
by boating and soft-shell crabs. I detest 
picnics and afternoon teas, and I — ” 

“That is enough,” interrupted Miss 
Swift, laughing. “Your character is be- 
fore me, an open book. It is only a ques- 
tion of turning the leaves.” 

Their eyes met an instant, an amused 
questioning in his, a little satire in hers, 
veiled by a decided indifference. 

Later in the evening he was again watch- 
ing the swinging of the round, stiff fan. 


6o 


AJV HOUR'S PROMISE. 


which it seemed to him might be awkward 
in other hands, and listening to the sweet, 
lazy voice. Altamera was telling him about 
her life at home. She had an unquestion- 
reliance in the interest of her auditor 
which was very pretty, and which Leslie 
may be pardoned for thinking was due in 
part to their peculiar relations. 

“ It was right funny,” she was saying ; 
“ we were all down in the hammock, and 
he came down from the house after he had 
found out we weren’t there. Kentucky, 
that’s my maid, she told him she reckoned 
we’d gone after persimmons, and told him 
to go the wrong way, just as I said, but 
he’s just stupid enough to go the right way 
when he has been told the other, like some 
men are, and when he found us, it was too 
late to do anything, and he said, ‘ So you 
all came down here after persimmons, did 
you?' And I said, *Yes,’ we did, we 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


6*1 


wanted some in a hurry, and he looked 
around and said, ‘If that’s so, it’s mighty 
funny you didn’t come where there were 
some bushes.’ ” 

Then Altamera laughed, and Owen 
laughed, too. He had a very hazy idea 
what she was taking about, but although 
he could not see anything very funny, 
it was quite certain that he ought to have 
done so. 

He was watching the color in her 
creamy skin, and noticing how ivory 
white her throat was against the white 
lace that was twisted about it. “ I expect 
I looked like a gooseberry,” she con- 
cluded. “ But we were always doing 
things like that.” 

“ Wasn’t it a little hard on the object of 
all this diplomacy?” suggested Owen. 

“Oh, well, you know I didn’t want to 
see him,” answered Miss Clayton calmly. 


62 


A AT HOUR'S PROMISE. 


Evidently this was reason enough always — 
that she did or did not want it. 

“ And if it should be somebody that you 
did want to see, what would be your tac- 
tics then ? ” inquired Leslie. 

“ Oh,” she laughed, “ then I should be 
sitting in the parlor, and I should see him 
coming, for we always see people coming 
at Embree, and I should go and look in 
the glass, and then I should take up a 
book, and I should be mighty surprised 
when he came in. I should take all that 
trouble, if it was somebody I wanted very 
much to see.” 

There was not a shadow in her eyes as 
she looked gayly up at Leslie. It puzzled 
him, for it seemed to him as if she must 
have shared his thought. 

As he lighted a cigarette and walked 
away from the house that evening, it oc- 
curred to him as not unlikely that Miss 


/iJV HOUR'S PROMISE. 


63 


Altamera Clayton would give him a good 
deal to think about. The idea was not 
unwelcome. It was with a pleasurable de- 
gree of excitement that he reviewed the 
bonds that made their acquaintance spe- 
cial, beyond any that she might have formed 
within the new circle in which she found 
herself. 

There was room, too, for much conge- 
nial speculation regarding what might be 
her personal characteristics. She seemed 
to him a type. To a certain sort of man, 
and it is equally true of a woman of the 
same tendencies, there is a subtle danger 
in the discovery of a type. 


CHAPTER IV. 


Come back with me to the first of all. 

— By the Fireside. 

I am myself indifferent honest. 

— Hamlet. 

Altamera Clayton became the fashion 
in the set to which Miss George belonged. 
It was a discriminating set, and its mem- 
bers decided that a quaint and unusual 
charm belonged to Miss Clayton, which 
became veritable fascination upon a closer 
acquaintance. Women liked her because 
she made no attempt to outshine, and be- 
cause she appreciated with such frank and 
pretty acknowledgment everything done 
for her pleasure. 

Men found her attractive for the divers 
and by no means unvarying reasons which 

64 


AN HOUirS PROMISE. 


65 


go to make up the final cause — that they 
found her attractive. Gwen, who made sev- 
eral attempts to analyze the potency of this 
cause, decided that much of it was owing 
to the combination of indolence and vivac- 
ity which made up her character. She 
fell naturally into all sorts of lazy attitudes 
when she was talking, or watching others. 
With her hands folded in her lap and her 
head resting on the velvet cushion of a 
sofa, or even sitting erect, her head up- 
turned, listening with her attentive smile, 
her rounded wHsts and fingers resting idly 
on the arms of her chair, you would have 
called her listless. This idleness once dis- 
turbed, however, she was another person. 
She danced like a soap-bubble, she rode 
fearlessly and superbly, she threw into what- 
ever she did a spirit which seemed to 
belong to energy alone, and yet she was as 
far from being energetic as Miss George’s 


66 


AAT HOUR'S PROMISE, 


systematized activity was from the lazy 
grace of her many hours of idleness. 

Miss George’s suggestions had modified 
somewhat her primitive style of dress, 
wisely leaving untouched, however, the 
hint of personality which its simplicity 
gave. Little details, unknown to any but 
a practiced eye, were altered here and 
there, making, instead of a badly fitting 
gown which nevertheless had contrived 
to be charming, a dress which was attract- 
ive still from its unconventionality, but 
which seemed an artistic part of the wear- 
er’s peculiar grace. 

‘‘ The Arcadian must be preserved,” 
Miss George had said, during a consulta- 
tion bearing upon this subject. It is not 
often we come by the Arcadian naturally, 
and when we do, we must not think of dis- 
posing of it, but we must make allowances 
for the climate.” 


A AT HOUR'S PROMISE. 


67 


Altamera had not the air of a person 
with a history. There was no shadow, ap- 
parently, intruding on the enjoyment with 
which she entered upon the novelty of her 
city life. This was a puzzle to Owen, to 
whom it seemed as if this girls • nature 
should have been as easily read as that of 
a child of ten. Since that first evening 
she had spoken of Robert Morton several 
times, always sweetly and gravely. She 
had asked one or two questions very sim- 
ply, listening to Leslie’s replies with tears 
shining in her eyes. 

Robert was very gopd to me,” she had 
said more than once. But there were no 
hints of a lost and irrevocable happiness, 
no outbreaks of passionate protest against 
the futility of life and love. Yet in the 
sort of existence she had led, her love for 
Robert Morton and his for her must have 
been the one grand central fact, the first 


68 


AN HOUR^S PROMISE. 


thing that had come into it to make it 
something else. For Leslie knew all 
about her life now. Well, she was young 
and she had forgotten. But that slender, 
forceful horsewoman who had ridden down 
through the pines, day after day, for tid- 
ings of her lover, — he had not thought she 
would forget. A little resentment for his 
dead friend, who had given so much, min- 
gled with the strong attraction Altamera 
exerted over Leslie. If she had been 
wrapped in regretful memories of the past, 
he would have been stirred by jealousy of 
what was beyond his reach. Owen was a 
man whose feeling toward a woman must 
always be one of complications. 

Miss George, she told him very soon, 
knew nothing of her engagement, beyond 
the fact that there had been one which had 
lasted but a short time. She had asked no 
questions on the only occasion that the 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


69 


matter had been referred to. Miss George 
cared very little for details. She had none 
of the feminine fancy for knowing all about 
a thing, unless such knowledge was. neces- 
sary. She lived a very full, busy life, 
meeting and entering into relations with a 
great many people whose past she had no 
time to review and whose future she had 
no inclination to forecast. She had always 
kept up some communication with her 
mother's Southern cousins, and when she 
learned that Altamera had a wish to travel, 
now that independence made it possible, 
she had written to urge her to spend the 
winter with her. She had received her 
with a warm welcome and no inquisitive- 
ness concerning what might have been the 
small events of what must have been a 
quiet life. 

It was not all at once that Altamera told 
Owen about her Southern home, and the 


70 AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 

life she had lived there with her uncle and 
aunt and cousins, to whom she had not 
been indispensable. He saw her very 
often. . She recognized from the first, as 
he hoped she would, the fact that their 
relations were something different from 
those existing between her and any other 
person. She began unconsciously to de- 
pend upon him in certain ways which she 
would have been the last to fancy danger- 
ous. Owen, perhaps not as ignorant of the 
danger, was equally indifferent to it. 

Often it was in the midst of a crowd of 
dancers, or in the smiling, elbowing, aim- 
less crush of an afternoon tea that Owen 
would find Altamera and listen to and an- 
swer her confidences of the past and spec- 
ulations concerning the present — for the 
future she took no thought at all. Some- 
times it was in Miss George’s reception- 
room, with its heavy curtains and dainty 


AN- no UR'S PROMISE, 


71 


furnishings, where he had seen her on that 
first evening, sometimes in the library, 
where Mr. George liked to find his daugh- 
ter’s friends when he came in to write a 
letter, find a book, or merely to poke the 
fire energetically for a few moments. Mr. 
George was one of those men who never 
found time to do any one thing long, unless 
it was to approve of his daughter. She had 
brought him up to do this, and now that he 
was old he showed no disposition to depart 
from it. 

Miss George’s friendship for Leslie was 
evidently strong enough to admit him on 
an intimate footing when he chose to as- 
sume it, yet they were not very intimate 
friends, nor were they particularly fond of 
each other. With the readiness with which 
she accepted everything else about Alta- 
mera, Lena George concluded that she had 
fallen in with Owen in the South, in some 


72 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


way that made it entirely natural that she 
should see so much of him. The post of 
prudent chaperone was perhaps not one of 
the many that Miss George was fitted by 
nature and education to fill. Leslie came 
late to a ball given by Mrs. Mark Swift 
with the assistance of her niece Antoinette, 
who was visiting her. He was not apt to 
be early, but he concluded that this was 
confoundedly, if not unprecedentedly late, 
when he found that he could not get a 
dance with Altamera until the very end of 
the evening, and then only because a young 
woman was obliged to drag her brother 
away, an unwilling victim, leaving a vacancy 
in Altamera’s list of engagements which 
Owen was permitted to fill. Meanwhile, 
he did not stand about the room with the 
picturesque but somewhat unsocial air of 
one whom man delights not, no, nor woman 
neither ; nevertheless, he was not too ab- 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


73 


sorbed to maintain a pretty accurate knowl- 
edge of Altamera s whereabouts. A short 
time before the dance came, which he was 
conscious of awaiting with something like 
impatience, he paused in the doorway look- 
ing into the large room, where superbly 
dressed women were moving to and fro 
turning up charming profiles, looking back 
over ivory shoulders, or raising unfathom- 
able eyes to men of whom there seems, pic- 
torially, so little to say in a ball-room be- 
yond the important fact that they are there. 

That Southern girl has a deuced- 
ly pretty arm,” drawled a young man 
next him, — ‘‘ Miss Clayton, you know. 
Thought Southern girls were generally 
thin. Don’t know why. I’m sure,” he 
went on meditatively. “No particular rea- 
son why they should be. Don’t wear 
themselves out the way Northern women 
do, I fancy.” 


74 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


'' I never understood that the curves of 
beauty were defined by the lines of lati- 
tude and longitude,” answered Owen 
dryly. The observation displeased him for 
some reason or other. Not that a man 
hadn’t a right to speak of a pretty arm. It 
was not a theory of his that when a woman 
wore no perceptible sleeve, it was for 
the purpose of keeping her arms under a 
bushel, as it were, but just now the ap- 
proval struck him as unpleasant. Even 
the speaker’s unassuming distrust of his 
own logic failed to propitiate him. 

Ahamera was standing in the middle of 
the room. The waltz music had come to 
an end for the moment. She had danced 
with the very last strains, and then paused, 
waiting just where these had left her, and 
raising her eyes to her partner’s face, lis- 
tened to what he was saying as quietly as 
if they had been talking for half an hour, 


AN- HOUR'S PROMISE. 


75 


Her faint color had deepened a little, her 
eyes had lost their droop and were like 
stars, her very dress seemed vibrant with 
the spirit of the dance, its light, diaphanous 
folds floating lightly away from her feet. 
She did not stand, she was poised — and 
yet she was entirely quiet. Her expres- 
sion was that of a child at a party — a child 
who is sure that after the biscuit will come 
cake, and with the cake ice-cream, and 
after the ice-cream — perhaps — mottoes ! 

“ ' I wish she were a wave of the sea, 
that she might ever do nothing but that,' ” 
said a grave voice on Owen’s other side. 
He looked around at the speaker, a tall, 
distinguished-looking man. 

“How are you, Harwood?” he said. 
“ When did you come back?” 

“Yesterday,” answered Harwood briefly, 
as they shook hands. “ Who is she ? I’d 
like her to sit to me for ‘ Haste,’ or the 


76 


A AT HOUJi'S PROMISE. 


‘ Spirit of the Foam,’ or something of that 
sort.” 

“To-morrow you wouldn’t,” said Owen, 
smiling. “ To-morrow you would want 
her to sit to you for a Lotos Eater.” 

“Is that so?” questioned Harwood. 
“ I wonder would she do ?” 

Just then a man standing behind Alta- 
mera carelessly put his foot on her dress. 
She turned and, leaning backward, lifted 
with her left hand the dainty skirt, in an 
attempt to draw it away. He stepped 
quickly aside, with a hurried apology for 
his awkwardness, and she looked up smil- 
ing into his face as if he had given her a 
bouquet. It was a pretty attitude and 
gesture, and showed the soft lines of her 
figure with peculiar grace. Then she laid 
her hand on her companion’s arm and 
crossed the room with him. Apparently 
he complimented her on her good-nature, 


AN HOUR’S PROMISE, 


77 


for as Owen stepped forward, he heard her 
languid tones as she said : 

'' Well, I reckon I haven’t got quite such 
a fiery Southern temperament that I can’t 
stand anybody’s stepping on the hem of 
my gown.” 

“ Miss Clayton,” said Owen, offering his 
arm, ** I have been waiting for you.” 

“You don’t leave me many minutes’ 
grace, Owen,” laughed her present escort. 

“ My dear fellow, what are your minutes 
to me?” replied Owen. “It is Miss Clay- 
ton’s that I am looking after. She has 
made me ruler over only a few, and I in- 
tend to be even more faithful than if 
they were many.” 

He led Altamera back through the 
ball-room, and seated her in a shadowed 
alcove, curtained off by a lifted portiere. 
Resting on the cushioned window-seat, she 
leaned indolently against the closed shut- 


78 A AT HOUR'S PROMISE. 

ters. She looked extremely young; her 
simple white dress was made in a youthful 
fashion of round waist and full skirts, and 
her bare arms and throat were childishly 
fair. From one hand, covered with its 
long, tan-colored glove, hung a fan. It 
looked as if it might fall any moment, 
but the careless grasp was firm and the 
plumes rested against her dress motionless, 
as she watched the shimmer and glance 
and sparkle of the room before her. 
Neither of them spoke for several min- 
utes. Possibly Altamera was tired ; she 
had been dancing continually. 

And this is not Embree,” she said at 
last. Oh, no, this isn’t Embree, at all. 
Yet I’m Altamera Clayton just the same. 
It’s real hard to believe it sometimes.” 

Leslie took the fan from her gloved 
fingers. But you are not just the same 
Altamera Clayton,” he said. “You do not 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


79 


even carry the same fan you did the first 
evening I saw you,” and he opened and 
shut the shell sticks of the one he held. 

“ I reckon you’ll break it,” she said tran- 
quilly, making no effort to take it away. 
“ No, that other one,” she went on, Cou- 
sin Lena said it would do for some other 
gowns, but it wouldn’t do for this. I 
thought it was very fine when I had it 
in Georgia.” 

“It was a round one of stiff, pink fea- 
thers,” said Owen, “and you had on a 
dress with something white around your 
neck.” 

“ Yes,” said Altamera, “ I did. You 
remember things mighty well, don’t you ?” 

“Some things,” he answered. “Indeed, 
sometimes I find it impossible to give my- 
self the luxury of forgetting.” 

She looked at him for a moment as if 
she did not quite understand him. 


8o 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


“ Well,” she said composedly, “ I don’t 
see why you should want to take the trou- 
ble to forget me.” 

Leslie looked straight into her eyes, 
and saw there not the slightest touch of 
coquetry, though his own, he was sure, 
must have betrayed to a keen observer 
that to do that he would have to take a 
great deal of trouble indeed. 

Just then Antoinette Swift came down 
the long room. 

There’s what I call a sure enough 
beauty,” said Altamera, with enthusiasm. 
'^You all talk about Northern girls walk- 
ing so much more than we do down South, 
and perhaps they do, but they don’t all 
know how to walk. Now Antoinette 
does.” 

Leslie watched Miss Swift critically as 
she came toward them. She did carry 
herself remarkably well, and she was very 


AN’ HOUR'S PROMISE. 


8i 


successfully gotten up throughout. The 
superb simplicity of her white dress, with- 
out a line of ornamentation to mar the 
perfect closeness with which it fitted every 
curve of her figure, the string of pearls 
around her bare neck, the plainly dressed 
hair, drawn back from the low forehead 
and twisted about her remarkably well-set 
head, every detail was appropriate and 
defied criticism. 

“ I know you have conceived a boundless 
devotion to Miss Swift,” he said coldly, 
“ but she is not the style of woman I 
admire, though I am entirely willing to 
admit that she is admirable.” 

Perhaps it would be unfair to inquire too 
closely into this statement. He had not 
been chary of his admiration of women of 
this style in earlier times, but he was 
sincere to-night. To-night she seemed too 
carefully finished, too successfully attentive 


82 


AJV HOUR'S PROMISE. 


to detail. Her apparent unconsciousness 
of the glances that followed her as she 
moved was but a higher consciousness. 
The indifference of the slight smile with 
which she spoke and listened was as 
studied as its attentiveness. Her apparent 
ignorance of what went on about her was 
an affectation. As he looked again at 
Altamera he found Antoinette artificial. 

That is because you don’t know what 
a pretty woman is, then,” Altamera was 
saying warmly. “ I tell you she is right 
down pretty.” 

This accusation of Altamera’s was not 
one to which Owen felt he had laid him- 
self open, and it amused him. Antoinette 
paused before the alcove, and laying her 
hand on the heavy crimson curtain, stood 
there a moment, looking in and smiling. 

“ I had saved this window for the wall 
flowers,” she said. “ If a person can not 


AN- HOUR'S PROMISE. 83 

be attractive here she can be attractive 
nowhere. You do not need those red 
shades on the candles, Altamera. I had 
expected you to defy the full glare of the 
gas-light.” 

“ I reckon I may as well be here as 
you,” answered Altamera easily. I ex- 
pect that was what you came for.” 

Antoinette’s escort laughed. 

“ Miss Clayton knows a good thing 
when she finds it,” he said brilliantly. 

Leslie had risen and stood waiting. He 
was always handsome, and perhaps partic- 
ularly so just now, but apparently Miss 
Swift did not think him worth a glance. 
She might almost be said to ignore him 
entirely, which surprised Owen. Women, 
when they spoke to other women who 
were his companions, generally looked at 
him. Once or twice before it had occurred 
to him that he was ignored by M.iss Swift. 


84 


A AT HOUR'S PROMISE. 


''You are a diviner, Altamera," said 
Antoinette, her white arm still sweeping 
aside the curtain, her head a little thrown 
back. "You perceive motives. I am 
afraid of you, for you do not know com- 
promise.” She paused an instant, looking 
down at Altamera. " I am not sure that 
you do not make me feel artificial.” 

Owen looked at her with swift surprise, 
but she did not see it. She had quick 
perceptions. She had analyzed the im- 
pression Altamera made, as he had done, 
though it was a less natural thing for her 
to do. 

He would have been better pleased if 
she had recognized also his own apprecia- 
tion. 

"As my aunt’s guest I must leave you 
undisturbed,” added Antoinette, and she 
let the curtain swing back into place, and 
turned away. 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 85 

'' This is a mighty nice party, Antoin- 
ette,” said Altamera. 

Miss Swift looked around over her 
shoulder. 

'' There have been times when we all 
thought that about parties,” she said, and 
this time her eyes met Leslie’s ; and there 
was a touch of amusement in them as she 
moved away. Owen could not see why 
Miss Swift should have found him amus- 
ing. The musicians began to play again 
as he sat down by Altamera. 

“ Aren’t you going to ask me to dance?” 
she said. 

No,” he answered. '' I would rather sit 
here. It is too crowded to dance, besides.” 

Owen liked to be imperative with women 
now and then. 

“ Well, I reckon some one else will ask 
me,” said Altamera composedly. 

'' You shall not dance with any one else,” 


86 


AN HOUIVS PROMISE. 


Owen said. “ This is my waltz, and you 
are to say you are engaged for it.” 

Oh, well,” and she smiled lazily, “ I 
believe I will, if you are going to talk like 
that. I don’t want to quarrel.” 

She had not moved since he had first 
brought her there. She sat leaning back 
against the shutters, the hand from which 
he had taken the fan still falling at her 
side, the other lying idly in her lap, her 
eyes still following the shifting figures of 
the ball-room. 

'' And are you sorry it is not Embree ? ” 
he asked, as if it were just now that she 
had said it was not. 

“No; why should I be sorry?” she 
answered. “ I am never sorry that I am 
not somewhere else. I was lonely at Em- 
bree, and I never went to parties, but when 
I was there I was happy enough. I used 
to ride and go rowing on the branch. 


JJV HOUR'S PROMISE. 


87 


Sometimes I did think I’d like right well 
to be down on the Gulf again, where I 
learned to sail a boat,” 

“ So you can sail a boat ?” 

“ Oh, yes ; I can sail a boat. I used to 
go out alone. You think we Southern girls 
can’t do anything, but now, we can.” 

I think you Southern girls can do a 
great deal. What else did you do at 
Embree?” 

“ The last part of the time I used to ride 
down and get Robert’s letters,” she said, 
her voice a little lower. It was the first 
time it had been she who introduced his 
name into their talk. 

Yes,” he answered quickly, '' I know 
you did.” 

Should he tell of his vision of her while 
he was yet ignorant of any tie between 
them? No, not here and now; his artis- 
tic sense bade him wait. Besides, would 


88 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


she understand the mingled pity, sentiment, 
and sympathy he had always felt for that 
then unknown rider. Probably not. Not- 
withstanding her engagement, she was 
childishly ignorant of the inflections of 
love-making, he had decided, 

Robert told me that you did,” he 
added. 

I used to wait for him to come, some- 
times. Then one day I found your letter. 
Do you remember that letter you wrote 
me?” 

“Yes, I remember it.” 

He could not well forget it, and how he 
had wondered what manner of woman 
she was to whom he was writing. He 
seemed almost to catch the scent of the 
doctor’s cigarette as it came in through the 
open window. The letter had seemed in- 
adequate then ; it seemed doubly so now. 
Why had he not filled it with expressions 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


89 


of the tenderest sympathy ? Why are 
we always so determined to err on the 
unemotional side ? 

“ I expect that was when I first felt that 
I would like to go away,” Altamera said. 
“ Not just then, perhaps, but later.” She 
paused a moment. “ There was so little 
to do, and Robert had said he would take 
me away. And then — I gave it up.” 

Owen read all a woman’s grief and a 
child’s disappointment in that last sad 
little sentence. 

Poor little girl !” he said. 

She glanced up at him with questioning 
eyes. She might have read a great deal 
of tenderness in his. He would have liked 
to kiss her, but this method of consolation 
was too primitive for the occasion. Appar- 
ently she saw none of this, for she went on 
quietly : 

“ But I was happy in Embree, too — right 


90 


A/V HOUR'S PROMISE. 


happy. But I don't wish I was back again. 
I'm not like that. I think you Yankees 
are all alike.’' 

Oh, no, we're not," said Owen. Heav- 
en forbid ! — and we are not all Yankees." 

Yes, you are," she persisted. *^You 
all seem to be thinking of another time 
when you were happier," 

‘‘ I can’t seem to remember any,” he 
murmured, but she did not heed him. 

'' There is Antoinette now. She ought 
to be happy and I reckon she is, but she 
always seems to be thinking of another 
time when she liked things better, and so 
do you. There’s Cousin Lena too. She 
is always doing things, but she doesn’t 
enjoy them as much as the things she’s 
done before. But perhaps — " 

She paused. Owen looked at her stead- 
ily with a question in his eyes, and she 
answered his look. Neither spoke, until 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 91 

Altamera said, without finishing her last 
sentence : 

“ Oh, yes, I know.” 

How long have you known ? ” 

“ From almost the first. Robert told me.” 

“ Does Miss George know too ?” 

'' She has no idea.” 

Don’t you think you should tell her ?” 

Why ? ” questioned Altamera calmly. 

I don’t believe it would make her any 
happier. If Robert had lived she must 
have known, and I expect it wouldn’t have 
pleased her. If there’s any happiness for 
her in his death, I reckon she ought to 
have it.” 

''But — ” began Owen, and then he 
paused. He was struck by the truth of what 
she said. Perhaps this was the solution of 
one of the difficult questions he had thought 
of, by a perfect simple and straightfor- 
ward mind — the right and true solution. 


92 


AN' HOUR'S PROMISE. 


The music was still floating on with the 
undertones of regret which run through the 
strains of popular waltzes. The final ca- 
dences were positively despairing. Is 
there not enough pain and bitterness and 
disappointed passion in the world, since 
they mingle even with our lightest amuse- 
ment ? He looked at Altamera, who was 
watching him with a glance of calm assur- 
ance. 

But if she ever knows — ” 

‘'Wait a minute,” interrupted Altamera 
swiftly ; “ I will tell you.” She leaned for- 
ward and lowered her tones a little, for the 
music had stopped and, though the sound 
of voices and the frou-frou of dresses still 
filled the room, conversation was more 
audible. 

“ When Robert told me he had once 
been engaged, he did not tell me the name 
of his sweetheart. He seemed to think 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


93 


perhaps I would care that he had loved 
some one else ; but I didn’t — I am not like 
that. Then once he heard Uncle John 
speak of Lena George. He saw her once, 
when he came to the North just after the 
war. Robert was so surprised and asked 
a great many questions, and afterward told 
me it was she. I was more interested 
then, and he said a great deal about her. 
Well, then — afterwards — it seemed to me 
as if I knew Lena George better than I 
knew anybody else, and she was my cousin, 
and we think a great deal of cousins at 
the South. When she asked me to come 
and see her 1 thought I would tell her all 
about it, and perhaps she would like me 
better. But when I saw her, I didn’t 
think so. I see we are different ; she 
would not like that a man should love 
another woman, after she had once loved 
him. She has never spoken Robert’s name. 


94 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


but I can see. Now I reckon she will 
never know, for I shall not tell her — and I 
believe you won’t.” 

Altamera smiled as she said the last 
words, and leaned back again. She had 
explained herself. But Leslie, too, was 
under conviction. He was struck by 
the readiness with which she reasoned 
in her careless fashion of a nature so 
entirely different from her own, but he was 
not satisfied. She knew Lena George 
surprisingly well, but he knew her better. 
Moreover he also knew the world better, 
and undoubtedly it would be easy to show 
her her mistake. 

“ But, Altamera,” he said, and he did 
not know that he had called her by 
her first name — apparently, neither did 
she. “ She is sure to know it some 
time ; such things are always known 
sooner or later, and then she will feel that 


A AT HOUR'S RROiMlSE. 


95 


you have been unfair — treacherous, per- 
haps. It will be unjust, I know, but even 
women as wise as Lena George can be 
unjust sometimes. It will be better — 
much better — for you to tell her.” 

Altamera shook her head, smiling still. 

“ I don’t think I’ll tell her,” she an- 
swered. “ She wouldn’t like it.” 

“ But certainly she will not like it 
when she finds you know so much of her 
past life, of which you have appeared to 
be so ignorant,” persisted Owen almost 
impatiently. He would have been more 
impatient if she had not been so pretty, 
perhaps. 

“ She has a right to expect that you 
will be frank with her.” 

Altamera pushed her hair back from 
her forehead, in the careless way she had, 
and it fell in short, roughened locks 
away from her white forehead. It made 


9^ JJV HOUR'S PROMISE. 

her look more childish and unconven- 
tional still. She leaned forward again, 
and looked, less indifferently, into the 
room. 

They are beginning to dance,” she 
observed. Then turning again slowly to 
Owen, she said : 

guess I’m right.” 

Miss Clayton,” said a man’s voice, as 
a dress-suit obstructed her view of the 
dancers, “this is ours, I think.” She rose 
instantly, and passed out with him. As 
Leslie followed, she paused in the door- 
way, as Antoinette had done, and looked 
back. 

“ I believe I won’t tell her,” she asserted, 
smiling. 


CH-APTER V. 

Oh, speak’st thou in sober meanings ? 

— As You Like It. 

All’s our own to make the most of, Sweet, 

Sing and say for ; watch and pray for. 

Keep a secret or go boast of. Sweet. 

— A Pretty JVoman. 

One other time Owen touched on the 
subject of Altamera’s relations toward 
her cousin, and Robert Morton’s relations 
to them both, but after that, not again. 
He met the same smiling, childish asser- 
tion, which he now recognized was a very 
hard thing to move. She had considered 
the question, and explained her decision, 
why canvass the same ground again ? She 
felt, amiably, that Leslie showed a peculiar 
persistence in bringing up the subject 

97 


98 AY HOUR'S PROMISE, 

a second time. Owen felt that his 
personal responsibility ended with this 
unsuccessful effort. He was sure that it 
was better that nothing should be said, 
than that he should be the one to speak. 
Miss George, although her natural nobility 
of character led her to disavow it, even to 
herself, had never been able to quite crush 
a slight sense of resentment toward Leslie 
Owen, and he understood this unspoken 
sentiment. He had known of her happi- 
ness, he had blamed her imperiousness, he 
had surmised her grief, and she could not 
entirely forgive him any one of these 
things. For two years they had been en- 
tire strangers ; then they had met accident- 
ally, and the breach had been ignored. 
After that, Lena George had remembered 
that he was Robert Morton’s best friend, 
that even in his partisanship he had tried 
to be a better friend to her than had been 


AN HOUR^S PROMISE. 


99 


her own willfulness, and she was generous 
enough to let him see that she felt it, and 
the matter had been silently understood 
between them. On his return from the 
South, he told her of Morton's death, and 
she thanked him for the way he had done 
it. It would not have been natural if he 
had not spoken of it at all, and yet it must 
be a recital full of pain for her, since there 
was in it no mention of what she had been 
to him. She had passed out of his life 
with those long years. So Leslie took the 
best way, when he assumed that it was 
something in which she must be interested, 
and which yet was as far from her present 
life and its emotions as if it had happened 
in another century. So it undoubtedly 
was ; her life had become another thing 
from that stormy, rebellious existence of 
many years ago, and she was satisfied with 
it, as well, she thought sometimes, as one 


lOO 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


can be in a world where it is not promised 
that we '‘shall be satisfied.” Yet she was 
glad that the pitiless fact had been told 
her so gracefully, and the bond between 
her and Leslie became a stronger one, 
though it would never be a perfect friend- 
ship ; there was too much, on both sides, 
to remember. Thus Owen felt positively 
that since he had not told everything there 
was to tell in the first place, it was not for 
him to disturb the present peace by hint or 
suggestion. The secret of Owen’s success 
with women, of which he had a great deal, 
lay not so much in his distinct personal 
charm, which nevertheless was peculiarly 
decided, but in this perception of the 
length and breadth and depth of their re- 
lations. He appreciated to the least detail 
the precise value of what he did and said 
or looked from the varying standpoints of 
the many women of whom he cared to 


AJV HOUR'S PROMISE. 


lOI 


make more than acquaintances. He never 
went beyond or failed to fill the position 
which each one accorded to him or wished 
to accord to him. The fact that in the 
one-sided view of one or more of the same 
women, these positions had occasionally 
encroached upon each other, he did not 
allow to disturb him. She who interested 
him at the time was the one that he could 
not permit himself to disappoint. 

Antoinette Swift was one of the very 
few women whom he was willing to con- 
cede interesting, with whom he failed to 
establish these relations. She eluded him, 
notwithstanding the impression, that he 
could not dismiss, that they might find 
each other unusually sympathetic in direc- 
tions. Apparently she did not share even 
this modified form of attraction. She al- 
most irritated him on occasions, not be- 
cause she was indifferent, but because 


102 


AN HOUR’S PROMISE. 


being, he could not help seeing, perceptive, 
she somehow failed to perceive him. He 
felt that, if he saw more of her, he might 
in time positively dislike her. 

But just now what he might feel toward 
her or any other woman was rapidly being 
lost in the absorbing interest of his feeling 
for Altamera. He did not seek to disguise 
the fact that he was in love with her. He 
thought her unapproachable in her lovely, 
indolent grace, set apart by her sweet 
ignorance of what makes the turbulence of 
nineteenth century life. He called her 
Hebe, and Priscilla, and Perdita. He de- 
veloped a remarkable talent for graceful 
parallel. He grew fanciful as he remem- 
bered the yellow jessamine, the sweet fresh 
brightness, which he had borne away from 
the murkiness of Embree station. Neither 
was this consciousness shadowed by any 
thought of disloyalty to the dead. He 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 103 

knew that if this girl would give herself to 
him, it would be the thing of all others 
that Robert would have wished. Owen 
had begun by being jealous for Robert ; it 
seemed to him now that he might have to 
be jealous of him. It needed no special 
insight to know why he had loved her. 
Robert Morton was in the nature of things 
even more susceptible to the unconscious- 
ness and innocence of this girl than he was 
himself. And he was glad that Robert 
had left so much for him to teach her, for 
that her love had been an ignorant, childish 
thing too, he did not doubt. 

They met one afternoon at a crowded 
tea. It was some time before Owen found 
her. She was seated on a low causeuse, 
talking with one of the fugitive young men 
to be found at afternoon entertainments. 
He was a younger man than Leslie, and 
slightly fearing him as an awfully clever 


104 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


sort of fellow, acknowledged his superior 
claims by readily yielding his place. 

“Fine tact young Miles has,” com- 
mented Owen. “ I shall make it my affair 
that he succeeds in life.” 

“ Can you make him succeed ? ” asked 
Altamera, with easily awakened faith. 

“ Nothing more simple,” responded Les- 
lie. “ It only needs an influential person 
like myself to mention him to a few people, 
and distinction is open to him. This con- 
fiding world, you know, is always holding 
out welcoming hands and listening to hear 
a good word about somebody. True merit 
backed by a testimonial of good character 
can win its way anywhere.” 

Altamera smiled sweetly without heeding 
the transparent cynicism of his statement. 

“ He said you were right smart,” she 
remarked. 

And did you need to be told that ? ” 


A AT HOUR^S PROMISE, 


105 

Owen asked. But I am glad I spoke the 
world so fair, since it is beginning through 
the medium of young Miles to do me 
justice. So you were talking of me,” he 
went on. 

Oh, yes,” said Altamera, I often talk 
about you.” 

This was delicious. Owen glanced 
around the room at Antoinette Swift. 
With what intention she would have 
said a thing like that ! It would have 
been accompanied^ by an inscrutable glance 
which defied and allured by its mystery. 
Altamera said it with the indifference of a 
child. Antoinette was holding a cup of 
tea in her gloved fingers, as she looked up 
at and talked with three men in front of 
her. Evidently she was relating some nar- 
rative made up of absurdities, for they 
were laughing, while she was serious. Her 
black velvet dress suited the clear colorless- 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


io6 

ness of her skin, and its heaviness the 
curves of her figure. 

I was not frightened. I was not sur- 
prised,” she was saying, her low voice 
reaching Owen’s ears, during one of those 
hushes that occasionally fall across a hurri- 
cane of conversation. “ I was simply anni- 
hilated — at least I should have believed I 
was if I had not gasped for breath. Anni- 
hilation does not, I fancy, admit of even 
gasping.” 

He caught nothing further, but he saw 
her sigh hopelessly and stir her tea. Then 
she looked up and across the room and met 
Owen’s eyes, and bowed to him gravely. 
He acknowledged the recognition, and 
turned immediately to Altamera. He was 
annoyed that Antoinette should have 
found him watching her. He was tired 
of unfathomable eyes. He was aweary of 
the inscrutabilities. 


AJ\r HOUR'S PROMISE. 107 

Let us get out of this,” he said, with 
that courteous gratitude for the hospitality 
extended to us, which is the outcome of 
overcrowded entertainments. 

There is Cousin Lena,” said Altamera, 
rising. “ I reckon she's had enough party 
too. Haven’t you. Cousin Lena?” 

I have had all of this that I have time 
for,” answered Miss George. Oh, you 
are here, Leslie. I am going, for I have 
another engagement, and as Altamera 
wishes to walk home, suppose you walk 
with her and come in and have dinner 
with us.” 

A few minutes later Altamera and Leslie 
were walking up the avenue. It had been 
a cloudy day, and the darkness had come 
early. There was a small moon, looking 
too inexperienced to be out alone on such 
a night, wandering down the western sky. 
Between it and the greenish glow nearer 


lo8 A AT HOUR'S PROMISE. 

tlie horizon, which they caught now and 
then through the open spaces of the streets, 
lay a bank of slate-gray cloud. The cold 
damp was invigorating after the heated 
room. The touch of Altamera’s hand on 
Owen’s arm was like the breath of spring. 
It thrilled him with suggestions of senti- 
ment. 

“Jove!” he said to himself, with the 
surprise of this scoffing generation, “ I 
thought I was by this sort of thing. I feel 
as idyllic as if we had been to singing 
school, and I was ' seeing Nellie home.’” 

After dinner Altamera and Owen were 
left alone in the library. Mr. George went 
to the club, and Lena must write a report 
to be ready for the meeting of a society 
the next morning. 

“We have done nothing this year,” she 
said, as she gathered up some books and 
papers from a table at her side ; “ nothing. 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE, 


109 

that is, that tends directly toward the 
object of the association as laid down in 
the constitution, but it would not do to let 
this be known. Under these circum- 
stances a heavy responsibility devolves 
upon me as secretary. I have not only to 
show what has been done, but why and 
how it was done. In fact, it necessitates 
a complete work of fiction, written with 
taste and discrimination.” 

'‘You’ve been secretary of things so 
much,” said Owen, as he idly noted Alta- 
mera’s complete absorption in a pencil 
sketch that hung just above her, " I should 
think it was about time to get out an 
edition of your complete works.” 

" I’m afraid my style is full of manner- 
isms,” said Miss George, rising, and stand- 
ing, tall and distinguished looking, under 
the gas-jets of the chandelier. " I’m 
hampered by being continually obliged 


no 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE, 


to refer to unwritten minutes. But I 
must leave you, to work up the material 
for this one. Tve been noting down 
through the week ideas that seemed to 
me to bear more or less directly on the 
subject.” 

Lena George had seemed to Owen more 
like her old self this evening than he had 
seen her in years. She was more the bril- 
liant, imperious, fascinating Lena George 
that Robert Morton had fallen in love 
with, than the self-reliant, incisive, indiffer- 
ent woman her friends had known of late. 
Possibly Altamera felt something of this. 
She had not listened to what they were 
saying. She seldom listened unless she 
were directly addressed. But she turned 
from the picture and watched Lena with 
her sweet, idle smile as she passed out of 
the room. 

“ Come back soon,” said Owen as he 


AJV NQC/R’S PROMISE. 


Ill 


held the door open for her. “ Simplify 
the plot and cut them off in the details. 
Let them work harder next year, if they 
want more of a story.” 

Then he came back and seated himself 
by Altamera on the deep, luxurious sofa 
that had been drawn up in front of the 
open fire. The pulsing firelight wavered 
over her hair, gave more color to her 
cheeks, and intensified the brightness of 
her eyes. One small, arched foot just 
reached and rested on the fender. 

As Owen leaned forward and looked 
smiling into her eyes, for the first time 
there dawned there a consciousness that 
was new, and, in his present mood, intoxi- 
cating. 

She looked away from him, into the 
flame, and although her lips still smiled 
calmly, her color deepened swiftly, and she 
did not speak. To a man of Owen’s sensi- 


II2 


AJV HOUR'S PROMISE. 


bilities there was a delight in that rare 
blush and the consciousness of her veiled 
eyes that a less delicately observing or 
more single-minded man might have 
missed. It was enough for the present. 

I had a note from Dr. Fenn to-day/' 
he said. He felt a perverse impulse to go 
back to that scene with her other lover. 
The half-averted head turned instantly to- 
ward him ; the veiling eyelids were raised, 
revealing no longer any trace of shy emo- 
tion, but instead a sudden, almost startled 
curiosity. It was one of the changes that 
were so fascinating. It was as if a hand 
had passed over her and she was another 
person. 

Dr. Fenn ? ” she said incredulously. 

Leslie might have been surprised in his 
turn, but he was so charmed by the sud- 
den change that he did not question its 
cause. He had given up trying to analyze 


HOUR'S PROMISE: 


113 

Altamera as he analyzed other women, he 
found contentment in observation. 

“ Why, yes,” he answered. '' IVe men- 
tioned him several times. The doctor 
that took such good care of Robert Mor- 
ton, you know.” 

“Oh, was that his name? I reckon you 
never mentioned his name before.” 

“ Have I not ? That is odd too.” He 
had forgotten what Morton had inti- 
mated, about Altamera being known to 
Dr. Fenn. There had been so much else 
to think of. 

“ And he took care of him, did he?” 
asked Altamera, leaning back in her 
former indolent attitude, her eyes fixed 
on the flames. 

“Yes, the best of care, Fm sure. He is 
a fine fellow, if I know anything about 
men. He was a Georgian too,” he added 
with sudden recollection. “ I remember 


A AT HOUR'S PROMISE. 


I14 

Robert said that he knew of you in some 
way. Was he a friend of yours ? ” 

Owen was not thinking much of what he 
was asking or of what she might answer. 
He was thinking that she had a pretty ear, 
and how tantalizingly sweet was the curve 
of her cheek and chin ! 

The face of her, the eyes of her. 

The lips and little chin, the stir 
Of shadow 'round her mouth — ” 

He almost said it aloud. 

“ I used to know a Dr. Fenn,” she re- 
plied, with what might have seemed hesi- 
tation except that her drawling intonation 
was always slow. “ But I didn’t think he 
ever knew Robert. I don’t believe it is 
the same one.” 

“ I’m sure Robert thought it was the 
same one,” said Owen, with careless persist- 
ence. He would not have been so careless 
but that that time seemed so long ago. 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE, 


'‘Well,” and she moved her head a little 
impatiently as if to dismiss the subject. 
Then turning her blue eyes toward Leslie 
and meeting his gaze, she said ; 

" But all that seems so long ago — so 
very long ago. It seems as if I couldn’t 
remember it.” 

It was the echo of his thought. Surely 
the past was over for them both. He laid 
his hand on hers and drew her toward 
him. 

" And to me',” he said swiftly and pas- 
sionately, " it is so long ago that it was 
before the beginning of things. There is 
so little for me to remember, darling, be- 
fore I loved you.” 

She had flushed crinjson at his first 
words, and as he paused an instant she did 
not speak, but she made no resistance as 
he drew her head to his shoulder. He 
could no longer see her eyes, as he looked 


ii6 an HOUR'S PROMISE. 

down at her, the fair hair pushed back 
from the low, white forehead, the eye- 
lashes resting on her babyish cheek. 
Then he stooped and kissed her lips. 

“ I love you, Altamera,” he said passion- 
ately. Do you hear me, sweet ? I love 
you.” 

I expect you do,” she said. She spoke 
still with lowered eyelids. Owen laughed 
aloud, and stooping, kissed her again. 

‘'And you?” he questioned. “Will 
you put all the past behind you, dear, ex- 
cept a tender memory? Will you begin 
where I have begun, and let me love you?” 

Tenderness and passion were no obsta- 
cles to Leslie’s gift of expression. They 
did not overwhelm his speech by their 
strength ; they guided it into deeper 
channels. 

“Well,” answered Altamera calmly, “I 
reckon you wouldn’t have kissed me if I 


AAT HOUR'S PROMISE. 


117 

hadn’t been willing to be your sweet- 
heart.” 

Then for the first time she raised her 
eyes, and Owen looked closely into their 
varying lights and shadows. 

'' Alta, sweet,” said he suddenly, you 
love me ? ” 

“ Oh, yes,” said she, undisturbed by his 
scrutiny, the firelight flickering on her 
blue dress and the indolent little hands 
lying folded in her lap ; '' I love you.” 

Owen felt no jealousy of the past. 


CHAPTER VI. 


Be hard on Love — laid there ? 

— St Martin's Summer. 

Peradventure this is not fortune’s work neither, but 
Nature’s. 

— As You Like It. 

Miss George did not appear again be- 
fore Owen left the house. He waited un- 
til late for the sake of seeing her — so he 
told himself and assured Altamera, who 
proved herself as fascinating in the new 
phase of their relationship as she had 
done in the earlier and more distant ones. 
Owen went away with the conviction that 
he had begun a chapter which held deli- 
ciously fresh and sweet relations, with no 
teasing uncertainties of plot and evasion 
of realities. 

ii8 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


119 


Altamera sat where he had left her for a 
few moments. The wood fire was dying 
out ; without its flickering shadows the 
room seemed cold and empty, and the gas- 
light added only glitter. She closed her 
eyes a moment, and dreamed of the warm 
Southern air and the scented nights, and 
the loneliness. 

I believe Til make Leslie take me 
down there and make love to me,” she said 
half aloud, and added smiling, I reckon 
there isn’t anybody can do it better.” 

Then she rose, and passing into the 
broad hall went dreamily up the staircase, 
her soft dress clinging to the balustrade as 
she swept slowly by, her hand slipping 
carelessly over its polished surface, her 
thoughts — not there, but whether in the 
room she had just left or further away, 
amid different conditions, it would be hard 
for those who knew Altamera best to say. 


120 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


As she opened the door of her room, she 
paused a moment, startled, before, closing 
it behind her, she took a step forward. 

“ Cousin Lena,” she said. 

The room was dark except for the ob- 
lique ray that fell from the street elec- 
tric light, through the uncurtained window 
directly opposite her. Against this win- 
dow was outlined a woman’s profile, as, her 
cheek resting on the cold pane, she looked 
down into the deserted street. Appar- 
ently she had not heard the closing of the 
door, for, her hands folded in her lap, she 
was absolutely quiet until Altamera spoke. 
At the sound of her cousin’s voice, she 
started. 

^‘Well,” she said, ‘'I have been waiting 
for you.” 

A great change from the gay tones with 
which she had left them early in the even- 
ing was in her voice. Evidently any emo- 


AN HOUR’S PROMISE; 


I2I 


tion that might have been in it was rigidly 
repressed. Altamera did not speak 
again ; she stood quietly where she was 
and waited. Lena went swiftly across the 
room and turned up the gas, until then a 
scarcely distinguishable spark. The sud- 
den change from darkness to light made 
Altamera cover her eyes an instant, before 
she could see. Lena went to the window 
and closed the shutters, without a word. 
As she turned, Altamera saw that she held 
a photograph in her hand. Going close 
to her and holding the picture so that 
she could see the face, Miss George asked,- 
still in the same emotionless voice : 

'‘Where did you get this photograph, 
Altamera? ” 

Altamera looked up smiling into the 
face of the older woman. 

“ Why, he gave it to me,” she answered. 
“ Robert Morton, you know.” 


122 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


“Yes, I know. Why did he give it to 
you ?” 

“ He gave it to me because we were 
engaged to be married, Cousin Lena.” 

Lena turned abruptly away and threw 
herself down in an arm-chair which stood 
near. Her brain had been busy with sur- 
mises for the past hour ; now that one of 
the wildest of them had become a cer- 
tainty, she felt dizzy. Altamera moved for 
the first time, and seating herself not far 
from her, waited for her to speak again, 
looking fearlessly and sweetly into her pale 
face, with its contracted brow. 

“ I do not know why I should be sur^ 
prised,” said Miss George at last, bitterly. 
“ He was never mine, or he would not have 
gone away. Men are certain to love again 
and yet again — they leave it to women to 
be faithful to a memory. Pshaw ! what 
platitudes I am talking,” she exclaimed in 


AN- HOUR'S PROMISE. 


123 


a different tone, as she rose impatiently and 
crossed the room. She glanced about her 
as she did so, with an odd realization of the 
pretty peacefulness of the scene, the dainty 
curtains, the sparkling toilette articles, near 
the shining mirror which reflected her own 
figure and Altamera’s, She remembered 
at the theater the other evening having a 
similar impression of incongruity during a 
stormy scene of love and jealousy which 
took place in a conventional parlor. She 
had said then ^ that they should have 
changed the setting. But she had been 
wrong ; the setting was apt to be conven- 
tional, and there was the audience — look- 
ing on from the outside. Her bitterness 
did not pass away. 

And yet I am surprised," she went on, 
'' and it is hard for me. I think because he 
is dead I have fancied he belonged to me 
still. I ought to have known that Death 


124 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE, 


never comes in time to save us our illu- 
sions.” 

She stood silent a moment before Alta- 
mera, looking down at her. 

“ But that it should have been you that 
he loved,” she exclaimed. 

I expect it does seem funny,” said Alta- 
mera readily. 

That it should be you, who know so 
little of what is in life, who are so pro- 
foundly ignorant of things that I have 
learned, that it should be you who took 
him away from me. We do well to talk of 
the irony of fate.” 

Altamera did not speak. She felt that 
there was nothing here for her to an- 
swer. 

Did you know that I too had been en- 
gaged to Robert Morton^ — that he loved 
my voice, my eyes, everything I touched, 
before he ever met or dreamed of you — 


AJ\r HOUR'S PROMISE, 


125 


of Altamera Clayton ? ” demanded Miss 
George. 

If she had thought to strike a spark of 
resentment to match her own still flame of 
emotion, she was mistaken. 

Oh, yes, I knew it. Cousin ' Lena,” 
Altamera answered as if the question 
had been couched in most commonplace 
form. 

And why have I not learned before that 
you knew it ? ” 

''Well, you knqw. Cousin Lena,” replied 
Altamera, her slow articulation doubly 
marked in contrast to the other’s imperious 
tones; "it didn’t seem to me it would 
do any particular good to tell you. I'm 
almost sorry you know it now,” she added 
frankly. 

Lena turned away and went back to her 
chair again. The tempest was strong with- 
in her, but there was no fighting against 


126 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


the calmness of Altameras diagnosis. In 
a moment Altamera spoke again : 

''Mr. Owen said I’d better tell you.” 

" Leslie Owen ? Does he know it, too ? 
Is he to know everything that concerns my 
dearest interests before I know it myself ? ” 
It was the bitterness of past years as 
well, that made itself heard now. " Have 
I been fooled on all sides ? ” 

" Well, I don’t believe any one else 
knows,” said Altamera easily. " And Mr. 
Owen would know because he was with 
Robert when he died.” 

" And were not you ? ” Lena’s voice was 
sharp in its intensity. 

" Oh, no, honey, I wasn’t. I never saw 
Mr. Owen before I came North.” 

Lena caught a quick breath of relief at 
this assurance. For the moment she had 
suspected Leslie of concealing so much 
from her. She could hardly have borne 


AJV HOUR'S PROMISE. 127 

that this girl should have been there at the 
last, asserting those rights which had once 
been hers. 

She rose wearily. 

“ I do not think you did right, Altamera, 
not to tell me.” For some reason or other 
her resentment on this score seemed to 
have spent itself. “ But how should you 
have known ? I suppose you thought it 
best to let sleeping dogs lie,” and she 
smiled a little. It is a hard thing for a 
woman to learn" any time that what has 
been for her a revolution has been little 
more than a mock fight for somebody else. 
Perhaps I am growing a little bombastic,” 
and she paused an instant, and then went 
on : 

'' But this is what it is. It is a hard 
thing for me to know that Robert Morton 
took back what he gave to Lena George, 
to give again to her little cousin Altamera 


128 


HOUR'S PROMISE. 


Clayton. I suppose he told you that he 
never really loved me ?” she said swiftly. 

'' No, he never told me that.’’ 

“ No,” repeated Lena more quietly, ‘‘ he 
would not have said that. It would not 
have been true.” 

There was a moment’s pause, and Lena 
crossed the room toward the door. 

Good-night,” she said. 

“ Wait a minute, Cousin Lena,” said 
Altamera; '‘I think if you listen to me 
you won’t feel so badly.” 

Lena waited, one hand resting on the 
door. 

I reckon Robert always cared most 
about you.” 

If Altamera had shown the slightest 
aspect of administering consolation, it 
would have been for Miss George the last 
unbearable sting. But it was entirely evi- 
dent that she was saying only what she 


AM HOVR'S PROMISE. 


129 


thought with a genuine wish to be fair to 
everybody, and her words brought a sud- 
den lifting of Lena’s heart. 

He loved me,” she went on. “ He did 
everything for me. I reckon he felt as if 
he couldn’t get along down there without 
me. But he used to talk about you as 
if you were something different. As if,” 
Altamera said sweetly, “you had done 
something for him no one else could ever 
do, and as if his life up here had been 
what it couldn’t ever be again.” 

The charmer charming never so wisely 
could not have reached Lena George as 
did Altamera’s almost smiling assurance. 
She came back into the room. 

“ I am glad,” she said softly ; “ yes, I 
am glad.” 

At first she had thought only of Robert 
and herself ; now it struck her how singu- 
larly gracious was this girl’s resignation of 


130 AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 

SO much right in the man who had been ; 
her lover as well. 

'' And it is all over, now,” went on Alta- 
mera, — '' all over for both of us. Cousin • 
Lena.” ' 

'‘Yes,” assented Lena absently, "it is i 

over now.” i 

Then something in Altamera’s tone i 

drew her attention and she asked: | 

" But why now, Altamera, any more \ 
than a year ago ? ” . \ 

" Because,” answered Altamera, with her ; 

undisturbed directness, " I am engaged to 
Mr. Leslie Owen.” j 

Miss George started. A wave of emo- 
tion which she did not understand over- 
flowed her. It was a new surprise, and she 
did not know yet where it carried her. 

She leaned over Altamera and kissed her. 

" Forgive me,” she said. " I am afraid 
I have been hard/* 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


131 

Oh, no, you haven’t been hard,” said 
Altamera, smiling. 

'' Leslie Owen” — it was difficult for 
Miss George to speak, more difficult than 
it had been yet — Leslie Owen knows 
how to make a woman happy, and I trust 
he will make you so,” she said. Good- 
night.” 

She has given him back to me. She 
has given him back to me!” Lena said it 
again and again to herself as she went to 
her room. '' I forgive her everything.” 

She knew now that it was joy that had 
so thrilled her, when Altamera spoke. . 

“ He is no longer hers, now that she is 
Leslie’s. Oh, Robert, ' it all comes to the 
same thing in the end. 

Since mine thou wast, mine art, and mine shall be. 

Faithful or faithless ; — thou must come 

Back to the heart’s place here I keep for thee ! ' ” 

The next morning she saw Leslie. . 


132 


AN HOUR*S PROMISE. 


It is an absurd complication,” she said, 
'' all that I feel about the matter. I am 
glad for you — I can be that uncondition- 
ally. And yet — no, there shall be no 
reservations. I am glad unconditionally. 
And I am glad for Altamera — I think you 
will make her happy.” She felt how con- 
ventional was this phrase she had used 
twice over — yet what else was there to 
wish for ? 

Altamera provides happiness for me, 
and finds herself,” said Leslie smiling. 

Owen’s eyes were exultant this morning. 

All the world loves me, I am a lover,” 
he had said as he entered. “ Miss George, 
I call upon you, too. ‘ My love is like a 
red, red rose,’ and all the rest. I know 
them all this morning. I am not sure that 
I could not sing a roundelay, if I was 
pressed.” 

Then he had stopped, for he had seen 


AN HOUR^S PROMISE. 133 

that something more than his engagement 
was in Miss George’s mind. Since then 
they had been all over it. 

“ Yes,” said Lena, in answer to his last 
words, she is a person of great content- 
ment.” She paused a moment, and then 
went on : “And yet I am a little resentful 
too — resentful for Robert.” 

“You would not have such a child as 
Altamera resign everything for the sake 
of a memory, surely ? ” said Owen. 

“ No, it is not for a memory of the dead 
that we resign everything, I think. It is 
for a memory of the living,” said Miss 
George, smiling a little sadly. “ And cer- 
tainly I would not have Altamera forego 
anything. Indeed I am very glad, for 
now — I am so very foolish to care for 
this — I need not always associate her with 
Robert. You see how selfish I am — to 
look at it so from my own side. I feel as 


134 


A AT HOUR'S PROMISE, 


if I had a justification in my selfishness, 
for I have been kept so — out of it.” 

Her voice quivered an instant with 
reproach as she said the last words. 

Perhaps we have deserved the rebuke,” 
said Owen, “but it has not been because 
we were indifferent,” and he raised her 
hand to his lips. She was singularly win- 
ning in this softened mood, so unusual a 
one. He felt that he must express his 
sympathy by a caress. He had never felt 
before that caresses could be acceptable to 
Lena George. 

It was later in the day that Lena said 
to her cousin : 

“You know you told me to go to your 
desk, Altamera, for that letter I asked 
for.” 

“Yes,” answered Altamera carelessly. 
She was playing with some roses Owen 
had sent her, burying her face in their 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


135 


sweetness, drawing them lightly across her 
cheeks and lips. 

'' It was in that way I found Robert’s 
photograph.” 

‘'Yes, honey, that’s all right,” said Alta- 
mera. 

“ I think it was mighty nice of Leslie to 
send me these roses. Cousin Lena,” she 
went on. “ I’m going to give you some to 
wear.” 

So the matter was dismissed for all time. 

As a spectacle, Altamera’s and Owen’s 
engagement proved an entire success. The 
most ill-natured could only say that Miss 
George had managed matters well. After 
it had become known as an accomplished 
fact, and people had made up their minds 
whether or not it had surprised them, it 
provoked very little comment of any sort. 
It was recognized as manifestly unobjec- 
tionable. 


136 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


Do you know, Mr. Owen,” said An- 
toinette Swift one evening, I am not sure 
that you are not quite an ideal lover.” 

He had taken her out to dinner, and she 
spoke in the midst of that buzz of conver- 
sation that made all but one’s next neighbor 
almost inaudible. 

Owen had felt his slight hostility to Miss 
Swift somewhat disarmed of late. She was 
very fond of Altamera, and he had seen 
them together several times. 

He turned to her now with a smile. 

'' Is that because you have caught me 
overtly looking at Altamera ? ” he asked. 
“ I acknowledge it without evasion. But in 
extenuation I would add that you have 
devoted yourself to the gentleman on your 
other side for precisely five minutes.” 

It was longer than that, I think,” ob- 
served Miss Swift. I intended it to be 
long enough to make you miss me,” 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


137 


I did miss you, and then, naturally, 
my eyes turned toward Altamera, like a 
load-stone and the star, and that sort of 
thing.” 

'' Because you are always missing her, I 
suppose.” 

Because she would not have so basely 
deserted me. She does not care for stout 
elderly gentlemen so much as she does 
for me.” 

I do,” said Miss Swift, I am devoted 
to them. I only hope you will live to be 
one yourself. You will, if you are good 
enough.” 

'' And then will you be devoted to me?” 
he asked, not unnaturally. 

Unless I have changed with years,” 
she replied serenely. But I do not 
think you will be even then any nearer the 
ideal type than you are now — but this is 
a digression regarding my personal taste. 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE, 


138 

I am regarding you now as a type in the 
present.” 

It is something to be ideal at any time 
of life,” Owen said thankfully. 

Lt is a good deal. I have observed you 
with Altamera, and you anticipate her every 
wish, as they say in the story-books. I 
have seen you — not so often — without Alta- 
mera, and you make a very creditable show- 
ing. It strikes me that you are worthy of 
imitation.” 

I can procure a number of the same 
kind, I am afraid,” said Owen. 

“ I have already told you,” she said quietly, 
that you are too young and too slender.” 

Yes, Mr. Stewart ? ” she went on to her 
left-hand neighbor, who had just then ad- 
dressed her, I have read it. I was much 
interested, too. But it seemed to me that 
the hero was such a prey to his own self- 


consciousness. 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


139 


Quite true. Quite true,” assented Mr. 
Stewart. 

“ One wanted to put a bright object on 
a stick and say, ' Look at this,’ as they do 
at the photographer’s, you know — while 
the author takes his picture.” 

“ Ha, ha ! Very good. Very good in- 
deed, Miss Swift. Capital criticism.” 

“Was that clever?” asked Miss Swift 
sweetly. “ It must be if you find it so, Mr. 
Stewart. But applause discomfits me. I 
always begin tCK think I must have read it 
somewhere.” 

Owen did not look at Altamera this 
time. He began to think that Mr. Stew- 
art had much better devote himself to the 
lady he had taken out. 

“ I understood,” he found occasion to 
remark with some emphasis, “that Mrs. 
Sloane seated me by you that I might be 
entertained. I have reason to believe that 


HOUR^S PROMISE. 


140 

she gave Miss Riding to Mr. Stewart that 
he might not be entertained — that is, too 
much. Why interfere with the designs of 
your hostess and neglect me at the same 
time?” 

“ Why, have I not been entertaining 
you^” asked Miss Swift, with soft surprise. 

Even those last remarks of mine were 
intended to be heard by you too. My 
conversation with Mr. Stewart is of the 
sort for one or more, you know.” 

“ I want something more than oblique 
attention,” said Owen. He was beginning 
to feel a little of his former irritation. 
Miss Swift’s indifference was so evident. 
It made him feel doubly exacting. 

“Yes,” she said “ it is easy to see that. 
You care only for the very special.” She 
spoke carelessly, but her eyes met his and 
seemed to imply — ^what was it they im- 
plied ? It was only for an instant that he 


AM HOUR^S PROMISE. 


141 


could have read anything there. The next 
she was saying : 

“ I think the other dishes of salted 
almonds really hold more, don’t you ? It 
can not be that I have eaten so many.” 

A dinner was just the form of entertain- 
ment that suited Antoinette Swift. A cer- 
tain precision of detail, an elegance of 
appointment that belong to a well-ordered 
dinner were the sort of thing adapted to 
her, and there was about her a daintiness, 
an apparent and deceptive simplicity, a 
sparkle and cut-glass lustre, that seemed 
particularly appropriate. So thought 
Owen as he observed her this evening. 
Again he looked across the table at Alta- 
mera, who was leaning back in her chair 
and listening to her companion. Evidently 
she was not much interested. How grace- 
ful she was ! After all, an al fresco enter- 
tainment was a fitter setting for her, to 


142 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


carry out his idea of appropriateness. 
Yet his next neighbor would not be 
amiss — in the forest of Arden, for instance. 
The conventional velvet cap of Rosalind 
would suit her very well. Just then Alta- 
mera looked at him and smiled. He 
wished he could go over to her and take 
her away from all these people, and spend 
by her side one of those moonlight even- 
ings he remembered in Florida, warm and 
filled with the scent of orange-blossoms. 
That would be an al fresco entertainment 
worth enjoying, 


CHAPTER VII. 

There is occasions and causes why and wherefore 
in all things. 

— King Henry V, 

Who made things plain in vain > 

What was the sea for ? 

— Dts AUter Visum, 

Winter went slowly by, lingering as late 
as he dared, so loth is this enemy of man- 
kind to admit of rational, innocent pleasure. 
Spring, who has learned so many of Win- 
ters worst tricks and has originated a num- 
ber of pestering aggravations of her own, 
had also taken her unwilling departure. 
Even May, which once it was the fashion 
much to praise, was allowed to go with no urg- 
ing for a longer stay. May, when Corinna, if 
her mother be unwise enough to let her go 
Maying at all, must go in rubber overshoes 


144 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


and carrying a blanket shawl ; May, who, 
with unprincipled license, takes advantage of 
all the sunny associations that twine about 
her name, of all the pleasant things poets 
have said about her in happier climes, to 
decoy us, of New England neighborhood, 
into indiscreet dreams, and practices which 
she promptly visits with disappointment 
and ridicule — May had given place to June. 
And June is no gay deceiver like the rest 
of them, even in New England and parts of 
the Middle States. She lacks the remorse- 
less hardihood to introduce areas ” of 
light snow when you are out looking for 
rosebuds. She is not unwilling to let men 
see that sunshine, warm and glowing, long 
days, throbbing with heat and light and 
perfume, blue skies and green trees are 
nice things in their way. 

It was toward the last of June that Miss 
George and Altamera left the city. Owen 


A HOUR'S PROMISE. 1 45 

was not to join them until a month later, 
when they were all to meet at Britton, a 
place on the sea-coast, which yet was not de- 
nuded of the charms of the country. There 
they could have the blue water before 
them all day and nevertheless could turn 
aside into green, shaded fields or a tract 
of fragrant pine woods. The days dragged 
for Owen through July. He told himself 
more than once that man was not made for 
burning pavements and crowded streets 
and ceaseless throng and bustle. That it 
was only with Nature that one reached in- 
tellectual and moral, as well as physical, 
development. In fact he spent a good deal 
of time ringing changes on the text of 
God’s having made the country, and men 
the town, and meanwhile read Altamera’s 
letters. She did not write many ; letter 
writing was not a distinct pleasure to her, 
and though Leslie was now and then in- 


146 AN HOUR'S PROMISE, 

dined to find fault with the lapses of time 
between their arrivals, he felt that he ap- 
proved of it. 

It was refreshing to find a woman,” he 
said to himself, “ who did not enjoy put- 
ting her emotions on paper.” 

He had kept the letter she had written 
him in answer to the first he had addressed 
to her, and he read it once in a while with 
renewed sentiment. With a revelation of 
that weird power which is capable of pro- 
phesying after the event, he felt that he 
had foreseen their present relations from 
the first. 

Britton is not yet a very fashionable 
place. There is no large hotel whose 
advertisements have widely disseminated 
knowledge concerning the attractions of 
its situation. 

The cottage which Mr. George had taken 
for his daughter was somewhat separated 


AN HOUR’S PROMISE. 


147 


from the others. From its front windows 
and doorways there was little to be seen 
but the sea, weltering away,” as Mr. 
Howells says, ''unnecessarily vast.” From 
the western piazza could be beheld the full 
glories of the sinking sun, and a line of low 
wooded hills, a screen behind which it 
might make its exit with proper stage effect. 
It was on this piazza that Miss George and 
Altamera were sitting to-night. The sky 
was flooded with color, burnished gold and 
waving red changing just above them to 
pale, luminous green, cool and quiet. 
Behind them, already high in the eastern 
heavens, the moon, nearly full, scarcely yet 
to be distinguished from the blue behind 
it, gazed upon the scene, with that placid, 
somewhat expressionless calm with which 
she is wont to view the brilliance of de- 
parting day. When all this flaming ex- 
citement is over, the world will be glad 


148 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE, 


enough of her illumination. Till then, 
with the indifference of superiority, she 
foregoes participation. Altamera, with her 
hands clasped over her head, half reclined 
in a long, low chair, her eyes fixed on the 
sunset. Miss George, her book closed in 
her lap, leaned forward on the rail, breath- 
ing in the beauty. Both were silent and 
very still, though the sea-breeze now 
and then ruffled Miss George’s hair and 
blew Altamera’s short locks back from 
her forehead. At last Miss George turn- 
ed her head and looked curiously at her 
companion. 

That child looks as, if the soul of 
the sunset had gone into her eyes,” she 
thought. '' I wonder how much of it has. 
I doubt if I ever find out.” 

“ Alta ! ” she said aloud. 

Altamera turned her head also, but not 
toward Miss George. Instead she looked 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 149 

past her, to the end of the piazza. A step 
could be heard on the pebbles ; it had not 
yet reached the path to the house. Miss 
George did not hear it, but Altamera lis- 
tened a moment, then settled her head 
back again in its former comfortable posi- 
tion, and answered : 

“ What is it. Cousin Lena?” 

What does it make you think of — an 
evening like this ? 

Well,” said Altamera, smiling. “ It 
makes me think of what it is, as much as it 
does of anything. But I reckon I don’t 
think about things, like you do. Cousin 
Lena. It is enough for me to see them. 
I like that.” 

“And it is enough for anybody,” said 
Lena, with a little sigh. “ It is — only — 
why, Leslie,” and she rose to greet Owen 
as he came around the corner of the 


piazza. 


AJV HOUR^S PROMISE. 


150 

‘^Yes, I had to come a week earlier,” 
he said, as he took her hand. 

“ I’m mighty glad to see you, Leslie,” 
said Altamera in her soft, rich voice as he 
bent over her. I heard you coming 
along the sand.” 

''And why didn’t you say so?” ex- 
claimed Lena. 

" Oh, I reckoned you’d see him soon 
enough,” said Altamera, laying her cheek 
caressingly against Leslie’s coat-sleeve as 
he stood, his arm resting on her chair. 

" I’m always soon enough for' Altamera, 
I’m afraid,” said Owen, laughing, and look- 
ing down into her eyes. 

" Well, I thought the first of August 
was getting to be a good way off,” she an- 
swered tranquilly. Thus began Owen’s 
visit. After this came the long, dreamy 
August days, and to-day was like yesterday 
and to-morrow would be like to-day, and 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


151 

sun and wind and sea were averse to 
changes, and it was only now and then 
that one said to himself, “It is only for a 
little while.” 

Owen said it when he came in one even- 
ing with Altamera from drifting about in 
the moonlight, and found a fire in the par- 
lor and Altamera was glad to sit down on 
the rug close to the fender. 

Antoinette Swift said it when she picked 
the first golden-rod and tucked it into the 
belt of her dark-blue boating suit. 

It was about the last of August when 
Antoinette came to Britton. She visited 
Mrs. Gerard Mason, whose cottage was the 
nearest to the old pier on the point and the 
farthest away from Miss George’s. Owen 
did not know that she was there for sev- 
eral days after her arrival. Then he met 
her with half a dozen other people, walking 
along a dusty road, on his way to post 


152 


AJV HOUR'S PROMISE. 


some letters. It was then that as he 
joined the party for a quarter of a mile of 
the way, she had picked the golden-rod 
and said : 

“ It is only for a little while,” with a 
half-suppressed sigh of regret. 

The sigh and the regret were evidently 
intended chiefly for the man on the other 
side of her, though she gracefully included 
Owen in the sentiment. Owen somewhat 
impatiently felt that there was always a 
man on the other side of her. He objected 
to this one the more that he proved him- 
self thoroughly equal to the occasion. His 
name was Murray; he was a man of forty, 
tall, with well-set head and shoulders, entire 
ease of manner, and evidently capable of 
inspiring regard. 

''One of the most charming things about 
you, Antoinette,” he now observed, *' is 
your regret. Because we all know you 


AN MOURNS PROMISE. 153 

really incapable of it, — you leave that to 
the rest of us.” 

'' Oh, as for you, we all know you are a 
skeptic,” rejoined Miss Swift, and con- 
sequently do not believe there is anything 
worth regretting. But, Mr. Owen, and 
I,” and she looked up at him gravely, “ we 
know what it is to believe. I know Mr. 
Owen is sorry that all this — ” and she 
waved her hand comprehensively, “ is only 
for a little while.” 

Owen had been wondering what the 
deuce this Murray called her Antoinette 
for. 

**Yes,” he answered, “I am sorry, but 
having been so long the sport of change, 
I have begun to believe that a tender 
melancholy enhances everything.” 

“Oh, no!” said Antoinette, with a 
slight emphasis, “ not everything.” 

He was not at all sure what she had 


154 AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 

meant by this, even when he had reached 
home — and had thought about it a good 
deal. 

Miss Swift is here, Altamera,” he said 
as she met him at the door, “and she wants 
you to come to see her.” 

“ I have been to see her this afternoon,” 
said Altamera, “ and she wasn’t at home.” 

“ So you knew she was here ? Why 
didn’t you ask me to go with you ? ” 

“ Oh, I reckon you don’t like Antoinette 
right well,” answered Altamera calmly. 

“ I have no time to like anybody 'right 
well ’ but you, sweetheart,” said Leslie. 

But it was before Antoinette came, after 
all, that Britton saw its fairest days. Long 
days they were, and evenings when it was 
never cold, when they sat on the sand or in 
the shade of the rocks, or sailed about in 
the harbor, and took no thought for the 
morrow what they should eat or what they 


AJV HOUR'S PROMISE. 155 

should drink, or wherewithal they should 
be clothed. 

Altamera was very fond of sailing, and 
she handled a boat capitally. She had 
learned during that one season she had 
spent away from Embree, when her uncle 
had taken her, with his own children, to 
the Gulf. Owen would lie luxuriously in 
the bow of the boat enjoying the graceful 
strength with which she managed the little 
sail, fully alive to all the pretty curves and 
alertnesses which were a part of his skip- 
per. He did most of the talking that was 
done at all. Occasionally he would recite, 
for her benefit, his favorite poems, some- 
times he would take a book and read 
snatches aloud, and Altamera would listen 
and smile and interrupt him in the middle 
of a sentence or a stanza, to bid him look 
at the people in that boat, or to spell out 
the name of a yacht. It was impossible 


156 AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 

to be resentful, but one day when she had 
imperiously directed his attention to some 
porpoises as he was repeating Matthew 
Arnold s lines to Memory,” he observed 
lazily : 

“ Altamera, I wonder if after we have 
been married years, a great many years, 
you understand, I should not be tempted 
to repine if you interrupted me in the 
midst of Matthew Arnold to say that you 
thought the windows needed washing.” 

Altamera laughed. 

“ I expect you would,” she said. Then 
she looked wisely about her, and added. 
There is hardly any wind, we may as well 
drift,” and the sail fell idly against the 
mast. 

The sea was like glass'; here and there 
only was a little roughening of the surface 
as a whiff of air touched it and was gone. 
Little boats were scattered about, almost 


AN HOUR^S PROMISE, 157 

motionless, like themselves. The sun was 
low in the west, and there was a warm, pink 
light over sky, land, and water. The air 
was clear, and the houses on the shore 
stood sharp and distinct against the sky. 
Altamera, her hand still grasping a rope, 
her head turned toward the shore, was 
still as if carven, as the boat made its way 
slowly in. 

This is delicious,” said Owen softly. 
'' What are you, Altamera ? Are you Faith 
or Hope, nearing the celestial shores, guid- 
ing me out of the shadows of unbelief 
into the rainbow colors of happiness ? Or 
are you a fair Destiny leading me to 
Realization ? ” 

He paused a moment ; the boat scarcely 
seemed to stir ; Altamera moved the tiller 
and did not answer. 

Or perhaps you are Undine who is 
rescuing the man who loves her from the 


AJV HOUR'S PROMISE. 


158 

dangers of the deep — a salt-water Undine, 
you know. Or a spirit from a fairer 
clime, tempting the waters of this, on a 
voyage of discovery ? Look around you, 
fair spirit, and tell me really if your own 
clime is fairer, after all, than ours ? ” 

'' Thus adjured,” Altamera turned and, 
glancing from the lazily smiling passenger 
to calmly brooding Nature, swept the hori- 
zon in a comprehensive" gaze. 

“ Yes,” she said, occupying herself with 
the tiller, it’s been a pretty day.” 

A very pretty day,” repeated Leslie ab- 
sently. Now and then he felt distinctly 
disappointed that Altamera had no imag- 
ination. 

“ You are Destiny,” he added, as the 
boat swung to her moorings. 

He had no thought of regret that she 
was Destiny, he was far too much in love 
with her for that. He only had to listen 


AN HOUR^S PROMISE. I59 

to her delicious voice a few moments, to 
the '' vowels turned caressingly between 
the consonants,” to know how fully he was 
under the charm. 

Only, the next afternoon when she had 
sent him out to walk alone, for she never 
would walk any distance, and he found An- 
toinette Swift sitting alone in the shade of 
some rocks, he wished Altamera had a 
little of her sympathetic perception of 
Nature’s and human moods. 

It was a gray day. The sky was gray, 
and the greenish-gray water was turned 
now and then Into whiteness by a damp 
wind which blew, not steadily, but Irra- 
tionally and unaccountably. It was a de- 
pressing day, one of those when, evade as 
we may the question of Cui bono ? it 
weighs us down with an unrecognized 
presence. 

Miss Swift was reading as Owen came 


AN- HOUR'S PROMISE. 


160 

toward her. Her brows were drawn to- 
gether a little as if it were something of 
an effort, but she did not look up until he 
spoke. Then she started a little ; she had 
not heard his step on the sand, and Owen 
fancied that she changed color for an in- 
stant. It was the first time he had ever 
seen Miss Swift’s color change for a trifle, 
and he felt vaguely flattered. She was so 
apt to ignore him in a way that was not 
even distinguished. 

‘‘ I have been trying very hard to read,” 
she said, '‘but it is not much use. What 
is the use of trying to do anything such a 
day as this ? ” 

“ May I sit down by you?” asked Leslie. 

“ Certainly, but I shall not try even to 
entertain you.” 

“ I am the lion and the fatling together,” 
he said “ in the way of being entertained ; 
a little child may lead me.” 


.A^ HOUR'S PROMISE. i6l 

Antoinette was unusually pretty this 
afternoon. She was buttoned up tightly in 
a close-fitting ulster with a red-lined hood, 
and wore a little cloth hat with a bird's 
wing, and a dark velvet rim about her hair, 
which the wind had disturbed a little from 
its usual severe simplicity, and the damp- 
ness had twisted the short locks into little 
rings. 

“ Moreover,” Owen went on, “ I do not 
mean to sit here long. I mean to ask you 
to take a walk with me. You will not 
mind a little wetting, I am sure, if we are 
let in for it.” 

“ Not in the least,” said Antoinette. “ I 
am prepared for it. I flatter myself I sug- 
gest a stormy petrel this afternoon. That 
is what I have made myself up for. And 
who ever heard of a stormy petrel minding 
the weather ?” 

Perhaps you will not even think it is of 


i 62 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


much use to walk,” said Leslie. He 
had seated himself by her side on the 
rock. 

“ Frankly — I do not know that I do,” 
she replied. 

** But a great safeguard in life is that 
where one can not see the good of doing 
anything one must do something. Even 
if what people call letting one’s self drift, 
generally means doing something.” 

It certainly is found to mean a great 
deal if one tries to get back to where one 
started from.” 

Yes,” she said thoughtfully ; “ and 

watch that dreary tide a moment, and see 
if one should not always give up all one’s 
idea of getting back, if one is going to 
drift.” 

After all, that piece of sea-weed that 
has finally been dislodged is going to be 
brought back time and again.” 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 163 

Yes, but taken away further and fur- 
ther. No, it is not safe to drift.” 

She turned and looked at him with some 
scrutiny, '' Especially,” she added, if the 
tide be past the full.” 

Did she mean anything ? Owen won- 
dered ; or was she only playing with simi- 
les for her own and his amusement ? 

‘‘And now shall we take our walk?” 
she asked, before he could answer. “Or 
have you thought better .of inviting 
me?” 

For answer he gave her his hand to help 
her to rise. The wind was blowing harder 
and the smell of rain was in the air. She 
turned her face toward the sea and took a 
long breath of the salt freshness. 

“ I think it is a walk that I have been 
wanting,” she said. “ Come.” 

Apparently she had no thought of any- 
thing but the weather. Owen had already 


164 


JN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


forgotten that he was tired of the inscruta- 
bilities. 

Leslie had been inclined to be a little im- 
patient with Altamera this afternoon be- 
cause she would not walk with him. It was 
so evidently nothing but indolence that 
kept her in. But he told her he was not 
sorry after all, since it would only have 
bored her and he supposed she would be 
pleased to know that he had met her 
friend, Miss* Swift, and had made some 
progress toward friendship with her. Al- 
tamera was pleased. 

“ I wish you and she would walk right 
often,” she said. Evidently she was glad 
to have so easy a remedy for Owen’s dissat- 
isfaction. 

Leslie told himself, as he told Altamera, 
that he was not sorry she had not gone. 
She would have been tired before the end 
of the first half-mile, and they would have 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 165 

turned back. But Antoinette walked well 
and was not easily tired. It was a pleasure 
to be her companion. It rained a little 
in a pettish way, before they reached 
Mrs. Mason’s cottage, but Antoinette only 
laughed at Owen’s regret. 

“ I am so glad we went,” she said simply, 
as they drew near the house. Her color 
was heightened by the exercise and her 
eyes were bright. 

'' And I can not thank you enough,” he 
answered. 

'' I ran away from all the people at the 
house,” she went on. I was very tired 
of them all, and in that mood I fancied they 
might tire of me — which I could not allow. 
There is Mr. Murray looking out for me.” 

In the open doorway, watching them ap- 
proach, stood, with his hands in his pock- 
ets, the man whom Owen had met with 
Miss Swift that first day. 


x66 


AN HOUR*S PROMISE, 


** Who is Mr. Murray ? ” he asked. I 
think I have not heard you speak of 
him.” 

Owen felt, as soon as he had spoken, how 
exceedingly weak was this observation. 
His curiosity about this man who called 
her Antoinette had been too much for his 
wisdom. He had never heard Miss Swift 
speak of any one except their most evi- 
dently mutual acquaintances. He spoke as 
if she had prattled by the hour of all her 
circle of family and friends. He was grate- 
ful to her that she did not seem to perceive 
his absurdity. 

** He is a sort of cousin of mine,” she 
answered. ‘‘We have always known each 
other and liked each other. He goes about 
a good deal and is a great favorite of Mrs. 
Gerard’s.” 

“You look pleased to sec me home 
again, Dick,” she said, as they passed in 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 167 

at the gate. Confess you have all been 
bored to death without me.” 

“ There have been two mysterious dis- 
appearances on the first floor, besides your 
own,” he answered, ‘‘ and I am inclined to 
suspect one or two quiet suicides above 
stairs. How do you do, Mr. Owen ? Com- 
ing in, aren’t you ? No ? Mrs. Mason will 
be sorry.” 

Antoinette did not ask him to stay. She 
gave him her hand and said good-by, and 
went into the house. Murray detained him 
a few minutes, and then Leslie, declining a 
repeated invitation from Mrs. Mason, took 
his way home. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


The little less and what worlds away ! 

— By the Fireside, 

Speak low if you speak love. 

— Much Ado. 

Two weeks later Miss Swift sat with 
Richard Murray at the summit of a little 
wooded knoll, cut off even from the sight 
of the sea. The ground was clear for a few 
paces on all sides of them, but sank, before 
them, into the duskiness of low trees and 
underbrush, and on each side of them were 
thick lines of beech and maple. It was late 
in September and late afternoon, and there 
was a light haze, imperceptible in the sun- 
light, which made the hollows in the woods 
a blue which melted into colorlessness 


i68 


A AT HOUR'S PROMISE. 


169 


nearer at hand. The trees had begun to 
turn yellow, and now and then a leaf fell 
softly, but audibly in the stillness. 

''Antoinette,” said Murray. 

She started a little, although he spoke 
quietly. Apparently she had almost for- 
gotten his presence. 

" Well,” she answered, scraping with her 
gloved fingers a bit o^f lichen off the 
wood of the old rail fence which straggled 
beside them off into the recesses of the 
wood in a vain effort to keep up appear- 
ances. 

"You remember perhaps,” he went on, 
" that I have always told you that I should 
not ask you but once to marry me. That 
I had no objection to letting you know in 
a variety of ways that I was in love with 
you, but that I should never force you to 
answer but once.” 

"Yes,” said Antoinette, "I remember 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE, 


170 

perfectly. And I never could see why 
you should make such a point of it.” 

Because that would necessitate your 
making a point of it. As long as you felt 
that you had a weapon in reserve you 
would refuse to consider any engagement 
decisive. You are that sort of woman. 
You are unscrupulous in your employment 
of advantages.” 

It seems to me that I am almost Napo- 
leonic.” 

It was evident that for some reason or 
other it was an effort for her to speak 
lightly. She seemed to dread a little what 
her companion might say. 

'' I mean that when you refuse me it 
shall be because you do not wish to marry 
me, not because you think you will, per- 
haps — but some other time.” 

'‘You have made the plan of duty plain 
before my face.” 


A AT MOURNS PROMISE, 


“ Don’t be flippant,” said Murray se- 
verely. “ I think that the time has come 
for me to ask you.” 

“ This afternoon ? ” she asked. 

‘‘Yes, this afternoon.” 

“ I think, Dick, it might be safely put 
off a while longer.” 

There was little entreaty in her voice. 

“ And that is just what I do not think.” 
He turned and looked at her now for the 
first time since he had begun to speak. 
She had stopped her play with the lichen 
and was listening quietly, but she was 
paler than usual. 

“ You know how long I have been in 
love with you, Antoinette. I -love you 
now — always. Will you say that you will 
marry me, or will you send me away ?” 

He spoke very quietly still. Antoinette 
was less calm than he. There were tears 
in her eyes when she asked : 


172 


AA^ HOUR'S PROMISE, 


“ Oh, Dick, can’t we let it stay as it is ?” 

“ What a foolish question, Antoinette.” 

“Yes, certainly it was foolish,” she as- 
sented quickly. “ I should think I was 
seventeen. Nothing ever stays as it is, of 
course.” 

Neither spoke for several moments. 
Antoinette was miserably perplexed. This 
man had always held for her a certain 
power that belonged to no other. It was 
in part due to their relationship and their 
long acquaintance, in part to his cool, de- 
termined, genuine personality, and perhaps, 
more than all, to his very true conception 
of her character. She liked him and ad- 
mired him, but could not say to him to-day 
that she would be his wife. It would be a 
way out of it all too, she thought, and 
things were beginning to look more misty 
than ever before, with intervals of clear- 
ness, pitiable clearness. Most men would 


A AT HOUR'S PROMISE. 


173 


have feared that they had chosen their 
time badly, but Murray knew her better. 

It was in just some such revolt from the 
perplexity of another emotion that he had 
everything to hope from Antoinette. 

Will you give me a week? ” she asked, 
after that long pause. She made no fur- 
ther effort to combat the necessity for 
decision. 

''Yes,” he said, " I will give you a week. 
That is much more sensible than your first 
suggestion.” 

"And now it seems to me that we had 
better go back,” said Antoinette. " It is 
growing late, and I do not wish to be con- 
fronted by the town-crier.” 

The blue hollows were growing darker 
and the white mist was more perceptible 
over the low-lying fields beyond. 

" Wait a moment,” said Murray. " I 
have another thing to say.” 


174 


AJ\r HOUR^S PROMISE. 


'' I object to having any more greatness 
thrust upon me this afternoon,” said An- 
toinette hastily. 

I wish to ask if you know what is com- 
ing for you and Leslie Owen out of your 
present relations.” 

Antoinette’s face flamed with indignant 
color, but she spoke composedly. Murray 
had always lectured her, and she had always 
submitted to it. It would not do to let 
him think that this was a matter so serious 
that it would not bear touching upon. 

“ I do not think our present relations 
will be productive of anything but a few 
pleasant memories — perhaps,” she an- 
swered. The color faded before he saw 
it, and she met his eyes with a glance as 
calm as his own. 

'‘You have been always, as I have said, 
unscrupulous in pushing an advantage,” he 
went on, “but there is about you a sort of 


AJV HOUR'S PROMISE. 


175 


native generosity toward other women, 
which would, I should fancy, prevent you 
from doing what you are doing now.” 

This was hitting Antoinette hard. 

“ I am not ungenerous,” she said quickly. 
“ Have I deprived, or attempted to deprive, 
another woman of one single evidence of 
devotion that belongs to her ?” 

'‘You are changed, if that which is evi- 
dent is what you consider worth having.” 

“ Her position is precisely what it has 
always been — she is entirely uninjured.” 

“ If you have stooped to the sophistry of 
this sort of reasoning,” he said indifferently, 
“ I have nothing more to say.” 

“ It would have been as well, if you had 
said nothing at all.” 

“ That is almost vixenish,” he said as he 
assisted her to rise. “ Let me ‘ pick those 
burrs off your coat ’ — or rather frock. I 
would not be vixenish, if I were you.” 


176 AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 

When they reached, on their way home, 
the beginning of the old pier, Antoinette 
said : 

“ Richard, I wish you would go on to the 
house and leave me here. You have an- 
noyed me and perplexed me, and I am, I 
think, as you hinted in your delicately 
veiled intimation, a little out of temper. I 
would rather stay out of doors until I am 
in it again.” 

''Very well,” he said quietly, smiling 
down into her eyes. He rarely smiled, 
which made such a look of value. " If you 
will come in before dark, I will leave you.” 

It was with the remembrance of that 
smile that Antoinette made her way out on 
the pier. 

" He understands me very well, lamenta- 
bly well,” she said to herself. Then she 
paused and leaning back against the mas- 
sive wall while she stood below on the 


AJV HOUR'S PROMISE, 


177 


hewn rocks, tumbled out of place years be- 
fore, she forced herself to regain her old 
composure. 

“ I am angry,” she thought, “ I am har- 
assed a little ; I am not sure that I am 
not miserable. And yet what have I 
done to deserve it all ? Oh,” and she 
pushed angrily against the gray stone, 
“why could not Dick have waited? The 
summer will so soon be over, and then 
I shall be myself again. I am always my- 
self when the gas is lighted and there is a 
roar of carriages going by, and there is an 
end to these long days and moonlight and 
the sound of the sea.” 

The haziness which had been a mist on 
land was a fast-growing fog on the water. 
It made the coming dusk more shadowy 
than ever. 

“Antoinette,” said a voice not far from 
her ; “ so it is you ? I saw what I thought 


178 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


was your figure, but the blurred outlines 
this evening make everything indistinct.” 

Owen spoke carelessly, but his eyes, as 
they rested on her face, said more than his 
voice. She did not answer him, but 
watched him silently as he stepped over 
sharp edges and on rocking stones till he 
stood a little below her at her side. 

“You do not look cheerful,” he went on, 
“ but that may not be your fault. A single 
person looking at the sea never looks 
cheerful. It was necessary for me to 
introduce, for spectators, the element of 
companionship.” 

“ I am not cheerful,” she said, “ I am 
quite the reverse,” but her voice betrayed 
nothing of a crisis of emotion. With him 
she was at home, here in this Debatable 
Land where they had been walking, where 
nothing had been said that must be an- 
swered, and where they had darkened their 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE, 


179 


understandings that they need not per- 
ceive. 

What has one to do with cheerfulness, 
nowadays?” speculated Owen. '‘It is an 
antiquated mood and belongs to ruffs and 
farthingales — whatever they may be. In 
this century one goes from the delirium of 
happiness to that of wretchedness, or else 
one is bored — these three moods only are 
permissible.” 

“ It is unlike you to yield so much 
to delirium of any description,” she 
said. 

“ It has not been too late for me to 
learn,” he answered. Something in his 
voice warned her that here too there was 
danger of a breaking away of the barriers 
she was fond of maintaining. 

“ I must go,” she said. “ I came here 
for only a moment.” 

“ But you have not told me why you are 


i8o AN HOUR^S PROMISE. 

not cheerful,” he objected, detaining her. 

Am I not to know ? ” 

Antoinette felt the risk, but she had 
trifled with such risks all her life. Besides, 
there was something, she did not pause to 
consider what, prompting her to a sort of 
recklessness. She turned half away from 
him, as she answered : 

I am facing the future. I would never 
face the future if I could help it. This 
time I can not put it aside, nor can I look 
another way.” 

Something in her manner or her tone, 
something in what he knew of the circum- 
stances, more than all, his, unfailing 
intuition, told Owen what was in her 
mind. 

Antoinette,” he said quickly. It was 
the second time he had called her by her 
first name this evening, and he had never 
done so before. It was an index of his 


AN HOUR’S PROMISE. i8l 

mood. “ Antoinette, are you going to 
marry Richard Murray?” 

“You have no right — ” she began. 

“ I have a right,” he exclaimed pas- 
sionately. “ I love you.” 

She flashed toward him, her eyes shin- 
ing, and her lips parted to say the scornful 
words that had never failed her. As she 
met his gaze she stopped, shivered a little, 
paled, hesitated, and, turning away again, 
laid her cheek in throbbing misery against 
the gray rock behind her. In that mo- 
ment of hesitancy, she recognized that 
for the first time in her life she had 
invoked a force that was too strong for 
her. 

In a few moments she spoke without 
glancing at him. 

“ Why, why do you tell me that ! ” 

He drew nearer, but did not touch her. 

“ And why should I not tell you?” he 


i 82 


JJV HOUR'S PROMISE. 


asked in his low voice, which became so 
easily caressing. ‘*We knew it, both of 
us. We wrong no one any further. We 
neither of us can change anything. Why 
not say it, and let it go ? ” 

It is a wrong,” she said — ‘‘ a wrong to 
Altamera. It never seemed that to me 
before — before, we were only enjoying 
what we had a right to enjoy, what Alta- 
mera herself could not have blamed — but 
now — oh, you should not have told me ! ” 

‘‘ But nothing is changed,” he repeated. 
Altamera will never know now any more 
than she would have known before. I 
would not have dared tell some women, 
but you and I are of the sort that may 
understand each other.” 

But Antoinette shook her head. She 
clung to her woman’s logic, that that which 
was unsaid and unacknowledged could not 
be treachery. 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


183 


Oh,” she exclaimed, turning toward 
him now, “ why would you not be warned ? 
I understood you well enough from the 
first to see the danger. I would have 
none of you. Do you remember that first 
walk ? — then I told you you should not 
drift. After that I left it in your hands — 
yours and Altamera’s. What were you 
both thinking of?” and she wrung her 
hands in her impatience. 

I am not sorry,” said Owen sadly but 
resolutely. “ I shall never be sorry. I 
shall be utterly wretched, but I shall not 
be sorry.” 

Go, now,” she said. Go, please. Let 
us get back to sanity as fast as we can. 
No, you shall not wait for me. I wish to 
be alone.” 

Half angry with her want of reason, half 
bitterly sorry that he had hurt her, wholly 
in love with her, Owen turned away and 


184 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


went back toward the road along the 
uneven stone pier. As he reached it, he 
looked behind ; she was following him, 
her light, firm figure poised unfalteringly, 
as she made her way over the gray stones. 
Without a glance in his direction, she fol- 
lowed the path to Mrs. Mason’s cottage 
and disappeared. 

Owen went on, passed the house where 
he was staying, a stone’s throw from Miss 
George’s, and entered the one where he 
knew he should find Altamera. He was 
sure that his only safety was to put him- 
self under the spell that \ few weeks ago 
had been so potent. 

There was no light in the little parlor of 
the cottage except that of the open fire, 
before which, on a dark rug of bearskin 
sat Altamera. 

Apparently she had been thinking 
deeply, for she stretched her arms over 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 185 

her head in an exhausted little yawn as 
Owen came in. 

“ Leslie,” she said, there’s something 
I want to ask you about.” 

H is heart stood still a moment. Did 
she by some feminine intuition know the 
whole story of his treachery ? It was 
unlikely, it was impossible, and yet he 
went forward into . the firelight prepared 
to face the worst. Her first words sur- 
prised him. 

“ Have you heard anything about Dr. 
Fenn lately ? ” she asked in her slow, 
drawling tones. 

Yes — no,” he answered. He hardly 
knew what he said, he was so relieved and 
so surprised. I was able to send him 
some books a few weeks ago that I hap- 
pened to know he wanted. After that I 
heard from him ; but as I say, that was 
some time ago.” 


AN MOURNS PROMISE. 


1 86 

^‘You never happened to tell him any- 
thing about our engagement, did you ? ” 
asked Altamera. 

No,” said Owen, wondering, “ I did 
not mention it.” 

“ I reckon he’s heard about enough 
about my engagements,” said Altamera 
thoughtfully. 

Owen had thrown himself down on the 
rug beside her, resting his head on his 
hand, and looking past her into the fire. 
As she said this, he turned to scrutinize 
her. She, too, was gazing into the fire. 
It reminded him of the evening in the 
library when he had first told her he loved 
her. The firelight again played over her 
features, and her little hands, clasped 
about her knees, were almost scorched, 
so close was she to the hearth. 

“What do you mean, Alta?” he asked. 
“Why?” 


AJ\r HOUR'S PROMISE. 


187 


“ Well,” began Altamera, “ I expect TJ 
better tell you all about it. You see, 
Adams — that's his name, Adams Fenn — 
used to live down near our plantation. He 
and I used to know each other right well. 
But he went away to grow up, and I done 
forgot him, as Kentuck says. After a 
while he came back, but it was a pretty long 
while, and I was Robert’s sweetheart then.” 

Altamera paused a moment, not, appa- 
rently, in any deep emotion, but lost in 
reminiscence. 

Adams was a right smart doctor then,” 
she went on. '' They all said he was, and 
I reckon they were about right. He fell in 
love with me, and took it mighty hard when 
he found out I was engaged. He was a 
pretty quiet fellow, but he went round after 
that like he didn’t care for anything. I 
reckon our Southern men take these things 
harder, anyway.” 


AJV HOUR'S PROMISE. 


“ That is libel,” said Owen. Of course 
he wouldn’t care for anything.” 

Now, you just stop,” said Altamera, 
smiling. “ You don’t know how he felt. 
By-and-by he went away — that was one 
time when he heard Robert was coming. 
He couldn’t stay and see him.” 

I don’t wonder,” murmured Leslie. 

I wasn’t sorry to have him go,” ad- 
mitted Altamera. “ I’d have felt as foolish 
as a jaybird if they’d both been there at 
the same time.” 

“ What a heartless little thing you are, 
Altamera ! Foolish as a jaybird ! . You 
ought to have felt guiltier than the sparrow 
that killed cock-robin.” , 

Owen was grateful for this story. It in- 
terested him, and made it easier for him to 
shut out the memory of the gray pier and 
the woman whom he saw standing there, 
against the rocks. 


AJ\r HOUR'S PROMISE. 


189 


'' Didn’t you care at all ? ” he asked. 

“ Oh, yes, I cared.” 

Something in her tone made him look at 
her closely again. For the first time a 
thrill of jealousy shot through his heart — 
of jealousy of anything but a shadow, a 
memory — this was a living, breathing real- 
ity — tall, dark Adams Fenn. 

And how much did you care ?” he de- 
manded, leaning over her and grasping her 
clasped fingers. Altamera met his eyes and 
smiled. 

I cared a great deal,” she replied. ** I 
expect I cared more than I ought to.” 

'' And you sent him away ? ” 

I didn’t have to send him away. We 
don’t have to do such things in our part of 
Georgia,” she stated with a proud little in- 
flection. I was engaged to Robert.” 

Owen had dropped her hands and had 
fallen back into his old position, leaning on 


190 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


his elbow, only this time he had moved so 
that his face was in shadow. He did not 
speak. 

He said good-by to me one night,” she 
went on, and I never have seen him again. 
I didn’t suppose he’d ever see Robert. I 
never knew he had till you told me. I am 
glad he took such good care of him. I 
reckon he took an interest in him on my 
account,” she observed naively. “ But then 
Adams was always mighty good to sick 
people — even down to the pickaninnies.” 

“ But how much did you care for him ?” 
persisted Leslie, from the shadow. 

'‘Oh, you Yankees for questions!” 
laughed Altamera. Then she suddenly 
grew sober. “ I cared for him so much,” 
she said, “ that it didn’t seem like there was 
anybody else in all the Southern States.” 

Leslie forgot even to smile. 

“ And did he know it ? ” 


AN’ HOUR'S PROMISE. 19I 

“ I never told him,” said Altamera sim- 
ply. “ I was engaged to Robert,” she said 
again. 

And did you never think of — of break- 
ing with Robert ?” 

'' Oh, no.” Altamera looked at him over 
her shoulder, in surprise. “ We didn’t 
either of us ever think of that ? ” 

Owen was sick at heart. What would 
she think of him if she knew in what a 
tumult of faithlessness and passion and 
reproach he had existed for the last ten 
days? To be sure, neither had he ever 
thought of a rupture . of their engage- 
ment — but that was all that could afford 
him comfort. It seemed to him that he 
had breathed in an atmosphere of duplic- 
ity that would have stifled Altamera ; yet 
it was not his fault — still less was it Antoi- 
nette’s fault. It was the cruelty of fate, 
that was all. 


192 


AAT HOUR'S PROMISE. 


“ Altamera,” he said humbly enough, 
do you care for Adams Fenn now?” 

Perhaps, even as he waited for her an- 
swer with a jealous tightening of his heart, 
he half hoped she would say yes. He lived 
lately in a world of fierce contradictions. 

“No,” answered Altamera, smiling, “not. 
in that way. I am engaged to you now, 
you know,” and she looked back at him 
a second time. “ I think, Leslie, I’ve 
caught your Northern ways a little, though 
I’m not like Cousin Lena yet,” and she 
shook her head. “But I think about 
whether I love you or not. I like to say 
to myself that I love you ; not often,” she 
added frankly, “ but sometimes. I never 
used to think about what I was thinking.” 

It was not easy for Owen to answer her, 
and yet he loved her. 

“Yes, I love her,” he said to himself as 
he went away from the cottage that night. 


AN- HOUR'S PROMISE. 


m 

I shall always love that pretty child; but 
as for Antoinette — she is the one woman 
in the world.” 

But as he walked a while up and down 
the stretch of sand when the tide was 
coming noisily in, it grew upon him with 
startling force that that pretty child had 
met and turned aside — almost with a smile, 
it seemed — the tremendous current of 
faithless love in which his soul was driv- 
ing hither and thither. He had thought 
her unconscious — ignorant of the stormier 
phases of emotion, but instead of being 
sheltered from them they had passed over 
her and left her calm. It was easy to say 
that hers was no deep nature to be stirred 
by a tempest. To do Owen justice he had 
not entire confidence in the sunless depths 
of his own nature. He only felt that the 
positions of tutor and learner had been 
suddenly and cruelly reversed. 


CHAPTER IX. 


No protesting, dearest. 

Don’t we both know how it ends ? 

— Sf. Martin's Summer, 

I propose curing it by counsel. 

— As You Like It, 

It was the first week in October. Brit- 
ton was nearly empty. Only the few fish- 
ermen who dwelt thereabouts kept up the 
traditions of a busy shore, and inland the 
farms had lost the air of yielding their in- 
crease in a business-like up-early-in-the- 
morning-and-late-at-night way, and the farm- 
ers seemed to have little to do except to 
pile up apples in large heaps about the 
yellowing orchards. Undoubtedly there 
were other things that might be done, but 
there was no particular hurry. 


194 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 195 

Only the crickets cared to hurry nowa- 
days. 

Owen lay stretched on the dry turf at 
the top of a low cliff, which rose beyond a 
strip of sand. Beside him sat Antoinette, 
and behind them both a second division of 
the cliff rose still higher, only to slope rap- 
idly down on the other side into stony 
fields. They were sheltered from the 
wind, which was blowing steadily and 
seemed to be increasing, although here it 
was not cold, where the October sun mel- 
lowed the air and warmed even the bar- 
ren surface of the rocks. 

Antoinette was conscious to her finger- 
ends of her companion, of the scene, of the 
dangerous tension of this last day, but 
with the somewhat unusual inclination, 
which was natural to her, to separate her- 
self for the time from what was really of 
absorbing interest, she was thinking not of 


196 


AJV" HOUR'S PROMISE. 


any one of them. Instead she was review- 
ing her parting, a week before, with 
Richard. 

Well, Antoinette,” he had said, I am 
going. It is the only becoming thing for 
me to do just now. Later, I shall proba- 
bly come and dine with you once a week, 
as usual. To-day I have my answer, and 
an answer of some sort is the only thing I 
really insisted on, you know.” 

The half-sweet, half-cynical smile, which 
was entirely his own, and which made An- 
toinette more fond of him than anything 
else, crossed his lips. 

“ Yes, I know, Dick. You were always 
moderate in your demands.” 

'' I think you will be sorry after I have 
left you,” he went on. “ Not sorry for 
your decision — I am not flattering myself 
to that extent — but sorry that you won’t 
see me again for some little time.” 


AN- HOUR'S PROMISE, 


197 


I am sorry already.” Her voice trem- 
bled a little. 

“Yes,” she said to herself to-day, “my 
voice was certainly not steady. It must 
have amused Dick.” 

Possibly it had amused him, and possi- 
bly not. He gave no sign one way or 
another. 

“ I hoped the necessity of making up 
your mind was a way out of it that you 
wanted,” he said. “ I see I have only 
helped to crystallize the present state of 
affairs.” 

“ I suppose you say things of that sort,” 
she said quickly, “ that I may be less sorry 
to have you go.” 

“ Perhaps,” he answered, smiling again. 
“You see I really didn’t think you would 
decide to lose me entirely. Good-by.” 

“ I can not, Dick, I can not,” she had al- 
most called after him — but not in the least 


IpS AN HOUR'S PROMISE, 

because she loved him, and she knew this 
and was silent. Was she sorry ? she won- 
dered to-day. Would it have been better? 

“ So you knew me as long ago as that ?” 
asked Owen at her side. 

No, it was better as it was. 

Yes, I think I knew you very well, 
even then. And when you became en- 
gaged to Altamera, I seemed to know you 
better.” 

And yet you seemed not to care to 
know me at all.” 

I was afraid. I have learned to recog- 
nize a danger in men like you. They 
interest me. I can not help trying to 
interest them.” 

And you usually succeed.” 

“ Usually,” replied Miss Swift calmly. 

'' That is what I am to you — what I 
have always been to you : a type — nothing 
but a type,” said Owen discontentedly, as 


AN- HOUR'S PROMISE, 199 

he plucked a tall, yellow spear of rush- 
like grass. If he had hoped for contra- 
diction he was disappointed. 

“ Nature can do nothing more for us 
than to put us in an interesting class,” said 
Antoinette with sententiousness. 

I do not care for Nature’s classifica- 
tion of me,” said Owen. “ That is an old 
and somewhat unsatisfactory story. It’s 
yours I want.” 

“ While you were engaged to Altamera 
I was yet more afraid,” went on Antoi- 
nette. I love Altamera.” 

Heaven help me ! so do I,” said Leslie 
gravely. 

I would not have come to this place if 
I had known that you were all here before 
I promised. After that it seemed destiny. 
Destiny is such a convenient scapegoat.” 

“ And to-morrow it is over,” groaned 
Leslie, burying his face in his arms as he 


200 


AJV HOUR'S PROMISE. 


lay. “ To-morrow we go back to where 
there can be nothing between us any more 
that will remind us of what life might be — 
Remind me ! Oh, God ! shall I ever for- 
get?” 

Antoinette looked down at him for an 
instant. It was well, perhaps, that he did 
not see her. His strong, brown hand 
grasped tensely the tuft of grass with 
which he had trifled a moment before. 
Antoinette had a sudden impulse to lay 
her own fingers on his, and let him grasp 
those instead. Why not ? It meant com- 
radeship, and that she owed him. But she 
did not. She looked away again, and said 
softly : 

'' ' Does truth sound bitter as one at first 
believes?’ Probably not. Do not let us 
think of it to-day, at least. This whole, 
long, beautiful afternoon is ours.” 

Oh, let me be miserable,” said Owen, 


A AT HOUR'S PROMISE. 


201 


raising his head. I can not even be 
miserable after to-day. What shall I do 
to forget how to love you, Antoinette?” 
he went on. “ It was not hard to learn, 
though it ought to have been like walking 
on red-hot plowshares.” 

That knowledge might go as easily as 
it comes,” sighed Antoinette. How many 
of us have wished that since Eve ! ” 

'' Shall I remember that you have a voice 
and eyes that haunt me wherever I am and 
however loud other claims on my atten- 
tion ? Shall I remember that you are the 
deepening and intensifying element of all 
the lovely moods of sea and land, that 
we — you and I, Antoinette — have watched 
together ? Shall I remember that you are 
the harmonizing force that prevents any 
jarring chord ? Shall I remember that 
you are a revelation ?” 

He spoke low and intensely, watching 


202 


AN HOUR’S PROMISE. 


her as if it were the last time she would 
listen to him. Her eyes were shadowed 
with what might have been regret or only 
the feeling evoked by his passionate words. 
She did not stop him — whether that she 
would not or could not, she was not 
sure. 

These are the things that I shall re- 
member,” said Owen. '' And these are not 
the things that will teach me to forget how 
to love you.” 

There was silence a moment — silence ex- 
cept for the waves that were driving each 
other faster up the sand below them. 

When a man has a general sense of 
having lost his bearings and being in 
danger of hopelessly drifting,” went on 
Owen, “ how certain words and expres- 
sions float into his mind, he does not know 
how, and seem to give him a sort of grip, 
now and then, of realities. 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 203 

* Dearer is love than life, and fame than gold, 

But dearer than them both, your faith once plighted, 
hold/ 

“ I’ve been saying over those old- 
fashioned lines of Spenser’s for weeks as 
if they were a sort of charm.” 

It is that half-unconsciously remem- 
bered wisdom that stands us in good stead 
at critical times, I think,” said Antoinette. 

I used to think that we gathered our- 
selves together, intelligently, to meet a 
crisis. Now I think that we are over- 
whelmed by it, and only catch at such 
scraps of early teaching and belief 
as seem to float near us in the confu- 
sion.” 

'' That is true,” answered Owen ; “ it 
is well to have traditions at hand.” 
He paused a moment and then Avent on : 
‘‘But yet, sometimes I get no further 
than ‘ Dearer is love than life.’” 


204 


JX HOUR'S PROMISE, 


Antoinette seemed not to listen, and 
Owen said no more. 

“ I used to think about myself that I was 
two things” — Antoinette spoke dreamily, 
her face still turned away — “ that I was 
strong and that I was straightforward — 
naturally, I mean. I sometimes was weak 
on trifling occasions, I knew, but I was sure 
that if the time ever came when there was 
much at stake, I should recognize the crisis, 
and be firm as a rock. That I should 
stoop to nothing that it would shame me 
to remember.” 

“ And you are strong,” said Owen ; “ you 
have stooped to nothing.” 

Again Antoinette did not appear to hear 
him. 

“ Now, as I said, we have changed all 
that. I wonder if it is by yielding in little 
things that one loses one’s perceptions of 
what a crisis is ? Or if it is only that one 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


205 


grows hard and untrue? For days I have 
listened to your voice telling me that you 
have loved me, and since the first time I 
have heard it without much of a shock. 
And yet you are the man whose love is 
pledged to a woman whom I love and who 
trusts me. It seems to me that there can 
be nothing more despicable. Theoret- 
ically I despise myself.” 

"You shall not despise yourself,” inter- 
rupted Owen hotly. " And what of me ? 
It is I that have done all.” 

" I have nothing to do with what you 
have done,” said Antoinette calmly. " I 
am speaking of myself^ Theoretically I 
say, I despise myself. And yet where is 
that revulsion of feelirrg that ought to 
affect me before a great wrong ? I do not 
tingle with the sense of my own treachery, 
as I should with a sense of guilt if I had 
stolen Altameras ear-rings. And yet I 


2o6 


AJ\r HOUR'S PROMISE. 


have done worse. I wonder why it is ? 
Am I so hard that I am beyond it, or am I 
so small that I can not rise to it ? 

“ I will tell you what it is,” exclaimed 
Owen. It is because you are a woman 
and not a Rule of Three, and can feel 
truth that is not mathematical. We have 
not gone about to do this thing. It is be- 
cause, from the beginning of the world, 
love has been too strong a thing for ab- 
stractions. You recognize the fact that 
here is something come into our lives 
which is not to be passed over and 
treated as if it was not. Why should 
you shut your eyes to it ? If you were 
making another suffer you might. But 
you are not making another suffer, and 
it would be childish to put it behind 
you and say, * See, there is nothing 
there.’” 

Owen spoke swiftly and warmly. He 


AN- HOUR'S PROMISE. 


207 


felt that he was speaking truth, and was 
glad that he could formulate it so readily. 

Antoinette shook her head. 

“ That sounds better than any reason 
I can give, I am afraid,’' she said. It 
seems to me rather that our mental vi- 
sions grows defective as we look at things 
so near. Love, Treachery, Faithlessness — 
they are sounding names, but when we 
hold them in our hands, as it were, they 
have become part of us — our moods, our 
life, our small individual experience — they 
can not be such great things, after all. 
There is no need of posing in their pres- 
ence.” 

She might have been speaking of the sail- 
boats that were dancing about before their 
eyes on the rough water, so calm was the 
irony of her words. There was little dan- 
ger of her ever tearing a passion to tatters, 
if, as she said, she held it in her hands. 


2o8 


AJV HOUR^S PROMISE. 


“Antoinette,” said Owen, “ I love you.” 

He was hungry for emotion this after- 
noon. She was too distant, too even, too 
calm. She had always held him at arm’s 
length. He had never denied himself the 
subtle pleasures of such spells as this, and 
now, when he loved this woman as perhaps 
he had never loved before, and must say 
good-by to her, he refused to be put off 
with abstractions. 

“ D.o not say it again,” she replied. “ It 
should not have been said at all. There 
is an effrontery in your saying it, and in 
my listening to it,, that pains if it does not 
shock me.” 

“,But, Antoinette,” he pleaded, “will 
you not once say that you care? Will you 
not stop for an instant looking at it from 
every standpoint but mine, and remember 
what it all means to me ? For you it is an 
episode. For me it is a wounding, searing 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 209 

experience. May I not have some dan- 
gerous sweetness, as well as bitter- 
ness ?” 

He had abandoned his recumbent posi- 
tion, and was leaning, one arm thrown up 
under his head, against the steep bank, 
and looked with passionate entreaty into 
her face. There was a slight movement 
above their heads, the rustle of a dress, 
some gravel rolled down the bank, and 
they did not hear it. Indeed, such slight 
sounds were hardly perceptible above the 
tumbling water and the fresh breeze. 

Antoinette did not trust herself to meet 
his eyes. In the sound of his voice there 
was danger enough. 

How unfair you are!” she said. “ How 
pitiably ungenerous I Oh, I know you so 
well ! ” she exclaimed passionately, arguing 
against herself, while she arraigned him. 
'' I know your weakness, as well as your 


210 


AN HOUR^S PROMISE. 


strength. Why — ” then she checked her- 
self abruptly. 

“Leslie Owen,” she went on, turning 
upon him with defiance, but speaking 
deliberately, “ I shall never tell you that 
I love you.” 

“ I reckon you might just about as well,” 
said a slow, scornful voice, and Antoinette 
and Leslie faced Altamera, as she stood 
above them on the bank, looking down 
with what seemed very much like con- 
tempt. 

There was silence for a moment. An- 
toinette turned deadly pale, but she was 
the first to speak. 

“ Altamera,” she said, “ you stand above 
us like an avenging angel, and you have 
the right to say what you will.” 

Altamera did not answer her. 

“ Leslie,” she said, “ give me your hand 
and help me down.” 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


21 1 


Without a word Owen lifted her from 
the steep bank, and she stood on a level 
with them. Antoinette looked at her in 
wonder. If she had been in Altamera’s 
place she could no more have let Leslie 
Owen touch her hand than she could have 
held it in the fire. 

'' I don’t know as there’s much for me to 
say” — Altamera’s slow accents were doub- 
ly, trebly scornful for their indifference. 

I don’t know why you have done it, An- 
toinette. You have always treated people 
right well, and I never expected you would 
do a thing like jthis. I reckon that’s 
why you’ve done it, because you knew I 
wouldn’t expect it.” She added the last 
words with a half-unconscious irony that 
cut Antoinette like a knife, and made her 
turn her face away, although the tears did 
not come into her eyes. 

'^ Altamera,” said Owen gently, Miss 


212 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


Swift has done nothing treacherous. It is 
I alone that you must blame.’' 

Altamera turned to him now with the 
slow, unconscious grace that he had so 
delighted in always. As she spoke she 
pushed her hair back from her forehead 
with that familiar gesture he had noted 
when first he saw her. The wind had been 
rioting in the short locks, for they had all 
three moved a little out of the shelter. 
Apparently she waived the question of 
where the blame lay — she had assigned 
that once for all, and Antoinette felt keenly 
that she was right — perhaps too keenly 
for justice. 

''You’ve laughed at me enough times, 
Leslie,” she said, " about our Southern chiv- 
alry. I rather think it is different from 
your Yankee notions.” There was about 
her neither anger nor apparent excitement 
of any kind. " I don’t know as a Georgia 


A AT HOUR'S PROMISE. 213 

gentleman would stand by Antoinette any 
better than you do, but I expect he 
wouldn’t have treated either of us like 
you have, in the first place.” 

Altamera,” said Antoinette, in low, con- 
trolled tones, “ if you had heard a little 
more you would have heard Mr. Owen 
say that he loved — not me — but you. He 
knows — we both know — that this is noth- 
ing but a brief unreason — a midsummer 
madness. It has nothing — nothing to do 
with his love for you.” 

Altamera looked at her and smiled a little. 

I expect you do feel right badly about 
it,” she said, not unsympathetically. 

“ Yes,” answered Antoinette quickly, 
‘'and I am the one to feel badly. It is not 
for you to do so, or — or Mr. Owen. We 
shall all go away to-morrow, and we shall 
not see each other again until this is all 
forgotten.” 


214 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


She spoke hastily, feverishly, now. She 
felt that so much depended on what was 
said in these few minutes. Things must 
be adjusted, there should be no crash, no 
severing of ties that should be irrevocable. 
Let this interview be tided over and things 
would adjust themselves. She had been 
in stormy scenes before now, and they had 
always finally yielded to her tact, and, it 
must be said, to her generosity. She 
watched Altamera eagerly. She was so 
calm, surely she would listen to reason. 
She could not know how deeply the wa- 
ters had been troubled — she should never 
know. 

All this time Leslie had not spoken, ex- 
cept when he entered his defense of An- 
toinette. There was so little for him to 
say. What he had to say to these two 
women must not be said in each other’s 
presence — for their sakes as well as his 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE, 


215 


own. He stood there waiting, gravely 
watching Altamera — not once had he 
trusted himself to look at Antoinette — but 
under his calm exterior he was feeling all 
the bitterness of the terrible mistake he 
had made. Either of these two women 
was worthy of a life’s love, and with one 
he had madly trifled, and the other he could 
not ask to reach out her hand and take 
what he had given her, even if she would. 
He felt as he had now and then felt be- 
fore, as he used to feel more often in the 
old days with Robert Morton — the weak- 
ness and futility of his own character. 
Perhaps they recognized it too, as they 
looked at him. He, with his intuitive grasp 
of emotions, felt that he read it in An- 
toinette’s eyes, and it added tenfold to the 
rush of bitterness that enfolded him. Yet 
neither of these women, whatever their 
other sentiments, could miss the charm of 


2i6 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE, 


the man, even now. It seemed as if the 
grace which was perceptible in all he said 
and did distinguished him, now that he 
said and did nothing, but stood like a 
culprit awaiting sentence. They knew so 
well the attraction of his voice and the 
sympathetic, appreciative companionship 
he could give, that, once enjoyed, was al- 
ways missed thereafter. 

'‘Leslie,” asked Altamera, "do you think 
you’d better say anything ? ” 

"No, Altamera,” he answered, "I think 
not — only this : Miss Swift is right. I 
have never dreamed of being false to you 
in deed — in any point within my own con- 
trol. As for the rest — I hope it will be as 
she says.” His voice fell with involuntary 
doubt at the last words, and for the first 
time his eyes met Antoinette’s. Her pale- 
ness frightened him, and he was con- 
scious of a tumultuous impulse to go over 


AN- HOUR^S PROMISE. 


217 


to her and take her hands, and tell her that 
if she cared as much as that it was all sure 
to come right. But there was no dan- 
ger of Owen’s ever doing anything in as 
execrably bad taste as that. In an instant 
their looks turned from each other toward 
Altamera, as if with her lay the decision 
concerning the future of all three of them, 
as it did in a sense. It was incongruous 
that this Southern girl, with her insou- 
ciance, and her unlikeness, and her igno- 
rance, should hold in her hands the desti- 
nies of these two self-contained natures, 
who in most things were so sufficient unto 
themselves. Perhaps Antoinette was the 
most miserable of the three. It had been 
hers to have misgivings, which it had not 
been Altam^ra’s : hers, not to be able to 
drown the thought of treachery in the 
intoxication of the present, as it had been 
Owen’s; and above all was her disappoint- 


2i8 


AJ\r HOUR'S PROMISE. 


ment in herself. She had been found 
wanting ; swift retribution had come with 
her failure — the very, particular retribution 
she had not dreamed possible. We all feel 
there is a choice in retributions. 

It should be — it must be, even yet 
averted — and she watched Altamera almost 
breathlessly. Altamera was hesitating be- 
fore she answered Owen’s last words. 

'' I expect you think you’d have to keep 
on hoping a good while, don’t you, 
Leslie ? ” she asked calmly. Without let- 
ting him answer, she added : 

I don’t believe there is anything more 
for me to say either. I think I’ll go now, 
Antoinette, and not wait on you and 
Leslie.” 

The quaint. Southern term of expression, 
in the sweet, languid tones, brought the 
swift tears to Antoinette’s eyes. It empha- 
sized to her ears the pathetic fact that 


Aisr HOUR'S PROMISE, 


219 


Altamera was a stranger in a strange land, 
and that she had been using her power to 
abuse the confidence of a girl who stood 
alone, away from her own home and her 
own people. 

“ Altamera,” she said, '' you have not 
said anything yet. You do believe the 
truth — do you not ? — that which is truth in 
this wretched misunderstanding — all that 
is not exaggeration and accident and tran- 
sient folly.” Antoinette did not glance at 
Leslie ; she might have faltered then, and 
while she did not see him, she could feel 
that what she was saying was indeed the 
truth. Her voice grew full of entreaty as 
she went on. 

'‘You believe that I can never really 
come between you two? — Altamera, you 
believe this.” 

Altamera smiled a little. 

“Antoinette,” she said, still with the 


220 


A^r HOUR'S PROMISE. 


same, cool, gentle friendliness, “ It won’t 
make any difference what you say to me. I 
don’t know you and Leslie Owen right well, 
but I know all about Altamera Clayton.” 

Antoinette wrung her hands with a de- 
spairing little gesture, but said no more. 
She was powerless, and things must go as 
this calm girl should decide. She was 
proud and had been self-confident, and 
defeat was a hard thing to bear. Defeat 
and a sense of being in the wrong were 
intolerable — but she gave up. 

After she had finished speaking, Alta- 
mera began to make her way along the 
narrow little path which clambered down 
the side of the cliff. It was not dangerous, 
only narrow and a little rough. For an 
instant Owen hesitated. Antoinette still 
stood her face toward the sea, her hands 
clasped, silent. It seemed so brutal to 
leave her there alone, but she was not the 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


221 


woman to whom he owed all allegiance 
that might be reparation. 

Moreover, he knew well enough what 
Antoinette would wish, indeed what was 
the only thing that she would tolerate ; so, 
without a word, he followed Altamera 
down the path. 

The wind blew so noisily she did not 
hear him at first, and she walked with care, 
for she was not much used to climbing. 
Owen watched, waiting to offer assistance, 
should she need it, but she seemed in no 
danger of slipping, and he felt it would not 
do for him to incur a suspicion of officious- 
ness. Just as she stepped on the strip of 
sand at the foot of the little cliff, she heard 
him behind her, and turned to face him. 

“ Leslie Owen,” she said deliberately, 
though for the first time her voice quivered 
a little, '' what are you coming with me for?” 

I am coming with you, Altamera,” he 


222 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


answered very gravely, “because I have a 
certain right to do so — a right that I shall 
not resign until you yourself declare that 
it is no longer mine — and one which I hope 
to keep as reverently as it deserves.” 

“ I reckon all questions of rights are 
over between you and me,” she said, still 
as deliberately. “ Perhaps Cousin Lena, 
or some one like that, could understand 
how it is you feel you have any of them 
left, but they are not sure enough rights to 
me any longer. Go back to Antoinette.” 

Though she did not raise her voice, 
her tones grew as imperious as if she were 
one of the old slaveholders of her native 
State: “ Go back to Antoinette and tell 
her you are not mine any longer. Go 
back and tell her she may say what she 
likes to you now. I shall not listen again. 
It is nothing to me what anybody says to 
Leslie Owen.” 


AN- HOUR'S PROMISE. 


223 

I could not say that to her,” said Owen, 
“ and she would not hear me if I did — do 
you not know that ? Will you not let me 
walk home with you ? ” he asked gently, 
after an instant’s pause. Without a word, 
Altamera swept him with her cool, indolent 
glance, and turned away. When she had 
taken a few steps she looked back over 
her shoulder, as he waited. 

“ I reckon you heard what I said, Les- 
lie,” she observed, and Owen stood still 
and lifted his hat, for he knew it was not 
for him to follow her. 

In a few minutes he was again at the 
place where he had left Antoinette, but she 
had gone. He looked about for her, but 
she was out of sight ; probably she had 
gone swiftly away, across the fields. 
Neither did' he dare to follow her. De- 
serted by them both, he stood leaning back 
against the cliff, gazing moodily out over 


S24 


AM HOUR'S PROMISE. 


the rough water. He felt bitterly the 
wretched complication that was the work 
of his hands. 

'H am a contemptible figure enough,” he 
said to himself, biting fiercely the ends of 
his mustache. I can see the detestable 
humor of my situation too, as well as 
another man. I am the hero that would 
fain love two women at once, and they 
have both left me, and I dare to follow 
neither the one nor the other. It is no 
easier for me that I can see myself per- 
sonating the farcical element of the trag- 
edy, Heaven knows the tragedy is real 
enough ! — Antoinette, my darling — it is 
something to you after all ! ” 

Possibly it is a good illustration of the 
errors in the law of compensation, that 
Owen was, of the three, the least hopelessly 
unhappy. 


CHAPTER X. 

Strange ! that very way — Love begun. 

— In a Year. 

No, ’tis not so deep as a well nor so wide as a 
church door, but ’tis enough. 

— Romeo and Juliet. 

Altamera walked quickly along the 
sands toward the cottage. The wind 
blew her hair over her face, and flung the 
long black lace scarf, knotted about her 
throat, first over one shoulder, then over 
the other. The incoming tide sent en- 
croaching lines of foam almost to her feet, 
but she did not heed either the one or the 
other. Now and then she looked out to 
sea, with a certain rare perplexity in her 
eyes, then again she looked straight before 
her, along the way she was going. Possi- 
bly even the yellow sunlight and the blue 
225 


226 


AN- HOUR'S PROMISE. 


foam-tipped water seemed cold and un- 
friendly, as she remembered the soft, cling- 
ing air and the perfumed shades of her 
Southern home. 

Miss George stood on the piazza, 
wrapped in a warm crimson shawl. 

'' Why, Altamera,” she called out, 
what do you mean by taking such a 
walk ? I watched you out of sight, and 
you have been away nearly an hour. Did 
you not meet Leslie?” 

Yes, Cousin Lena, I met Leslie.” 

There was something in her tones that 
prevented Miss George, she did not know 
why, from asking where he was. Alta- 
mera seated herself on the step of the piaz- 
za as though she were tired. Lena looked 
at her with a touch of uneasiness. She had 
not been entirely blind to what had been 
going on in the other lives so near hers 
these last weeks, but she had been very 


AJV HOUR'S PROMISE. 227 

slow in opening her eyes, and after all 
there had been almost nothing perceptible 
to even the most suspicious scrutiny, and 
Lena George was not suspicious. With 
some acquired cynicism, she nevertheless 
was a person of generous beliefs, and she 
refused to admit to herself that faithless- 
ness could be part of Owen's nature. She 
had seen him under circumstances where 
he had been almost aggressively true. 
While she could not regard Antoinette as 
an entirely simple person, she admired her, 
and recognized in her a certain nobility of 
character — and more than all, she said to 
herself, for she was a wise though not a 
watchful woman, that they would soon all 
go away, and Owen would be again wholly 
under Altamera’s sway, when there should 
be no longer this temptation at his door. 
Still she looked at Altamera this morning 
a little anxiously. 


228 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


Cousin Lena/' said Altamera, her 
hands clasped around her knees, her head 
resting on the railing behind her, '' I 
reckon it’s about time I went back to 
Georgia.” 

“ Why, Alta, child, are you tired of our 
cold North already ? ” 

Altamera reached up her hands and took 
hold of her cousin’s without looking at 
her. 

I’m not tired of your North, Cousin 
Lena,” she said. “ It isn’t cold where you 
are, honey.” 

After the little caress, her hands fell 
again into their former position and she 
added : But I’ve been thinking I’d better 
go home. I reckon I’d like to see the old 
place again.” 

Don’t say it in that tone, Alta,” ex- 
claimed Miss George, pained instinctively. 
Yet it was certainly not unnatural that this 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE: 229 

girl should be a little homesick after nearly 
a year’s absence, though she had not been 
entirely happy before she came away. 
‘'You make me think of Mary Stuart’s 
' FrankreicJi s fernen OceanF' 

“ Well, I guess nobody’s going to behead 
me,” answered Altamera reasonably. 

“ We will talk with Leslie,” said Miss 
George lightly ; “ he may have something 
to say about it.” 

“Yes, you may talk with Leslie, if you 
like,” replied Altamera indifferently, “ but 
I expect I belong down South.” 

Just then a servant spoke to Miss 
George, and she went into the house, 
leaving Altamera still seated on the steps. 
By and by she grew cold. The glow 
from her unaccustomed exercise had 
faded, and she looked white and a little 
pathetic as she rose and walked irreso- 
lutely to and fro in the beating, exultant 


230 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


wind. It was so unusual for her to be 
perplexed. More than once before she had 
stood in the midst of complications and let 
them eddy about her, but she had left them 
to adjust themselves. This time the mys- 
terious quality in them touched her more 
nearly. Her instinct was not to grapple 
with the difficulties that pressed upon her. 
Altamera had never grappled with any- 
thing in her life, but they jostled her,, they 
dizzied her, they hurt her. She thought of 
Leslie’s letter to her. It had been an inci- 
dent in the level dreariness of those first 
weeks. She thought of her first sight of 
him in Lena’s drawing-room. She had been 
glad that Robert’s friend, who had stood 
by him when he died, who had seemed to 
take so much thought for her and her sor- 
row, was this tall, strong, handsome man, 
whose voice and manner had something in 
them, from the first, different from what she 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


231 


saw and heard in others. It had always 
seemed as if for his strength anything 
would be easy. He had not been very 
strong, after all. Possibly it hurt her 
more than anything else that Antoinette 
had been untrue — Antoinette, who had 
been her first woman friend. It had not 
occurred to her to question the sincerity of 
the friendship. She saw now why the peo- 
ple up here had such a way of thinking 
about everything they felt or did. They 
had to — it was the only way. Perhaps she 
had better learn to do it, too. Still, she 
was irresolutely pacing back and forth be- 
fore the piazza in an effort to be warm. At 
last she came to a decision, and, turning 
from the house, walked straight down to 
the beach where the boats were moored. 
The old fisherman who took charge of them 
was not there, but had left a somewhat in- 
discreet but not altogether inefficient rep- 


232 AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 

resentative, in the shape of his youngest 
son. 

Sizer,” called Altamera. No one had 
ever ascertained what Sizer s whole name 
was, for Sizer certainly seemed to be an ab- 
breviation. Sizer himself gave an unintel- 
ligible account which might or might not 
be strictly veracious. Sizer s accounts being 
liable to this cankering doubt. As to the 
rest of the inhabitants, Sizer seemed to be 
a very good name,^ as names go, and they 
never thought of challenging it. 

'' Yes, marm,” replied Sizer. So far as 
he had a heart susceptible to the tenderer 
emotions it belonged to Altamera. 

She don’t never seem to be in such an 
all-fired hurry as most of ’em,” he asserted, 
which to a person of Sizer’s sedentary pur- 
suits was in itself an attraction. To-day, 
however, his confidence was destined to be 
shaken. 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


233 


“ Sizer, I want to get my boat right 
away — d’ye hear, sir ? ” 

Apparently even Altamera might be said 
to be in a hurry. From her lips the com- 
mand seemed, perhaps, less incisive than 
from another’s, but still she evidently 
meant to have the boat before long. Sizer 
relinquished, somewhat gloomily, the con- 
genial occupation of firmly securing by 
physical pressure three of the radii of a 
star-fish, for the satisfaction of watching 
him manipulate the others, and prepared 
to pull Altamera out to the light, little 
sail-boat moored in deeper water. 

“ I shouldn’t wonder if it should come 
on to blow,” he suggested. 

Yes, Sizer, I reckon it’s going to be a 
sure enough blow before night, but I’m not 
afraid,” answered Altamera, stepping into 
the little craft. 

I knew you wasn’t afraid, but I didn’t 


234 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


know but what you’d like to have me go 
with yen” 

'‘No, not this time. You’re a right 
smart boy in a boat, but I’m going by my- 
self to-day,” and Sizer received an intoxi- 
cating smile from his goddess in recogni- 
tion of his solicitude, as she set her white 
sail and let it be filled out by the stiff 
breeze. Even in these unbelieving days it 
does not occur to us to disobey the behests 
of our goddesses when they are actually 
with us. 

Two hours later Antoinette appeared on 
Miss George’s piazza white and miserable. 
Lena came out to meet her. 

I hear that Altamera has not come in 
yet, — that she is out alone in her boat,” said 
Antoinette hurriedly. 

“Yes,” answered Miss George; “I do 
not know what the child can be thinking 
of, to stay out in such weather.” She 


A AT HOUR'S PROMISE. 


235 

would not show the anxiety that she felt, 
but there was no need — Antoinette knew it. 

“ She understands how to manage her 
boat,” she added. 

Oh, yes, she understands perfectly well 
how to manage her boat,” repeated Antoi- 
nette mechanically. Then both women 
turned and looked out to the angry sea, 
which was fretting at the approach of a 
storm, rolling menacing waves up the 
beach and over which the early twilight of 
a sunless afternoon was settling down. 
For the bright sunlight of the early part 
of the day had vanished, and the spray was 
flinging itself under a gray and cloudy 
sky. Miss George walked restlessly down 
the path and back again. Antoinette 
stood still, shivering a little in spite of the 
heavy wrap that covered her from head to 
foot. 

‘‘Leslie has gone down to the beach 


2^6 an HOUR'S PROMISE. 

where the boats are,” said Miss George, as 
she passed Antoinette the second time. 
“ He went out after her once, but she 
steered away from him, and he thought he 
did more harm than good.” 

Antoinette caught her breath, with a 
half-sob. 

After all, as he says, Altamera is safe 
enough if — if — she is not careless. Still, 
he is desperately anxious, but does not 
mean me to see it.” 

Antoinette waited until she came toward 
her again, and then she stepped in front of 
her. 

“Miss George,” she said, “why don’t 
you say it? I know what you are thinking 
of me. I am waiting — ” her voice faltered 
a little and then went on — “ I am waiting 
for you to say it. It can not make things 
any worse — or me any unhappier. But 
perhaps that — to have me unhappier is 


AN HOUR^S PROMISE. 237 

what you would like,” she spoke ques- 
tioningly. I think if I were in your 
place that is what I should like.” 

Miss George looked at her curiously. 
She had never seen this girl so moved be- 
fore. There were dark lines about her 
eyes, and she would evidently have 
broken down if she had not been too 
miserable to cry. 

“You are entirely wrong, Antoinette,” 
she answered gravely. “ Why should I 
blame you — or anybody — much ? What 
has happened was in the nature of things, I 
suppose. You might have been stronger 
perhaps, and Leslie — Leslie should have 

j 

known enough to go away.” Her voice was 
a little harder when she spoke of Owen. 
“ But we are all unhappy enough — 
Heaven knows ! Why should I want to 
make you any unhappier ? Perhaps if you 
had come vaunting your triumph,” and 


238 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


Miss George smiled sadly enough, '' I 
should feel differently. But you are not 
doing that.” 

“ Oh, Miss George, don’t ! — please don’t. 
I can not bear it,” cried Antoinette. '' I 
am so defeated — so worsted.” 

“That is curious, isn’t it?” said Lena, 
“ when it is Altamera who has lost ? It is 
so with us women usually, I think. Our 
triumphs are more than half defeat.” 
Then she turned away to the sea again. 
“ I wish Leslie would come,” she said. 
“ He would, if there was anything to 
tell.” 

“ He has told you all about it, I sup- 
pose ? ” asked Antoinette, still in the sub- 
dued tones which did not seem natural 
to her. 

“Yes, he told me all when he came in. 
1 wish I could have known it when I saw 
Altamera ; she was homesick — poor little 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


239 


girl ! I should not have let her go away 
alone.” 

She paused a moment. Altamera's 
words, with the pathetic cadence she had 
not understood, came back to her and 
brought the tears to her eyes. 

“ Oh, Miss George ! ” cried Antoinette, 
what do you think of me !” 

Lena looked at her, startled by the mis- 
ery of her voice. She had thrown her 
arms around one of the slender pillars, and 
clasped it as if for support, her head resting 
against it, and the wind tossing her dress 
and hair. It was so different from the An- 
toinette she knew, this clinging figure, with 
pale face and frightened eyes, that Lena 
felt instantly that it was she that was most 
to be pitied, after all. 

It is I have done it — and how do you 
think I am feeling now ?” 

Lena went over to her. 


240 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


''Antoinette,” she said, "I think you 
are exaggerating the danger that Altamera 
is in. And I think you are exaggerating 
your share of the blame of all this un- 
happiness.” 

" I never exaggerated anything in my 
life,” interrupted Antoinette. " I under- 
rate danger always. I underrated this — 
from the beginning.” 

Miss George put resolutely away from 
her all the bitter anxiety and self-reproach 
which she felt were justly her own por- 
tion, that she might lighten the load that 
perhaps — only perhaps, but still it was 
within a dreadful possibility — this girl 
might have to bear all her life long. 

" If there was danger from the begin- 
ning,” she said gently, " there would always 
have been danger somewhere — for Les- 
lie. I think I have known it from the 
first.” 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE, 


24T 

Then, why, oh, why did you not take 
her away?” sighed Antoinette. 

“Not this particular danger — I did not 
foresee that,” answered Lena. “ But I 
have never been quite happy in this en- 
gagement. I knew Leslie Owen so well, 
I could not quite believe that Altamera 
would always satisfy him. Not that he 
should have felt any want in her,” she in- 
terrupted herself to say. “ He should 
never have done so.” 

“No, never!” assented Antoinette 
wearily. “ I know that. But I know 
Leslie Owen too,” she added under her 
breath. 

“ He is not a difficult man to know — for 
some of us,” went on Lena, “ but Altamera 
could never know him, and it was that 
made me afraid. But it was not for me to 
prevent it, I decided ; and he was so much 
in love with her — and he can make a 


242 yiN- HOUR'S PROMISE. 

woman very happy.” Still the conven- 
tional phrase — she thought. Perhaps that 
power was not such an advantage, after 
all ! Antoinette moved her head rest- 
lessly. 

“ But this was sure to come some time, 
Antoinette, and better now than later. 
Now, come down to the beach. We are 
both too uneasy to stay here. I did not 
want to go alone. I am glad you have 
come — and together we will watch Alta- 
mera’s landing.” 

Antoinette raised her eyes and looked at 
Miss George steadily. 

“I admire you,” she said, ''more than 
any woman I ever saw. I never could 
have been as fair as that.” 

When the two women reached the shore 
they saw Owen talking with the old boat- 
man. As he saw them he came toward 
them. Instinctively Antoinette paused as 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


243 


if she would go back, then went quietly 
on. Her anxiety was too great to allow 
her to dwell on her personal relations with 
Leslie — that seemed to belong to another 
phase. Until Altamera should have come 
back there was nothing else that could 
concern them much. 

“ There she is,” said Leslie, pointing to 
a little boat off on the water — almost the 
only one out. I think she is coming in. 
God grant she come safe.” 

He was pale, but his voice was quite 
calm, and the glance of recognition with 
which he acknowledged Antoinette’s pres- 
ence was entirely natural and free from 
restraint. Antoinette felt a sort of numb 
surprise as she recognized this. He bore 
no marks of a conflict such as she had 
waged with herself. He . was as strong, 
as cool as ever. Apparently he had not 
lost his grasp of the things she had 


244 


AN NOUirS PROMISE. 


felt slipping from her hands — and yet 
he had never held them as firmly as had 
she. 

‘'There seems nothing to be done but 
to wait,” he said. 

“ I don’t know as there’s any other man 
’long this shore got sech a fool for a boy 
as I have,” drawled the old sailor, who had 
also approached. He looked at Antoi- 
nette, and she supposed afterward she 
must have smiled assentingly, for he 
went on : 

“ I says to Sizer, ‘ Whoever was the 
tarnation fool that gave the lady the boat 
in sech a blow.’ ‘I be,’ says he. ‘And 
what ’d you do that for?’ I asked him. 

‘ ’Cause the lady wanted it,’ says he. 

‘ Wal,’ says I, ‘ I’ll be dashed if I know 
where ye git your everlastin’ soft-headed- 
ness ; it ain’t from me.’” 

Antoinette had forgotten he was speak- 


AJV HOUR'S PROMISE. 


245 


ing ; Lena George had walked down close 
to the water s edge. He turned to Owen 
for sympathy. 

“ Ladies always think their wantin’ to do 
a thing is reason enough for all Natur’ to 
stand by and give ’em leeway,” he re- 
marked, “ and so I told him. ' But it ain’t 
in yer,’ says I, 'to be anythin’ but a fool.’” 

Another time Antoinette would have 
been pleased by the old man’s sympathetic 
anxiety taking the form of this just and 
amiable tribute, unaffected by family prej- 
udice, with its side lights on the female 
understanding, but she did not heed him 
now. She was watching too eagerly that 
little white spot dancing so precariously 
up and down on the now seething waves. 
The water foamed up almost to her feet. 
Miss George re-commenced her pacing 
up and down. Owen moved about and 
watched the boat through a glass, dis- 


246 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


cussing each motion with the sailor, but 
she stood still and silent, never taking her 
eyes from the sail-boat that looked so tri- 
fling and helpless in the temerity with 
which it set itself in the face of wind 
and waves. How purposeless seemed its 
course ! Was it really coming nearer ? 
Was it not drifting aimlessly, beaten 
hither and back ? How perilously it 
tipped now and then ! it seemed as if the 
white sail swept the water like the wing of 
a sea-bird. Would Altamera ever come 
riding lightly up to the landing-place, as 
she had done so many times before ? 

“ If it would be any use,” the old boat- 
man was saying, we could put out again 
and reach her easy — if she kept her course.” 

It would be no use,” she heard Owen 
answer shortly. 

“ She will not keep her course. I have 
tried it twice,” he said, between his shut 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


247 


teeth, to Lena George, a few moments 
later. “ It only made matters worse.” 

There was a note of anger in his voice. 
Antoinette was glad he could be angry. 
It must be a relief from the awful dread 
that had taken entire possession of her. 
Unconsciously she knew that, after all, in 
certain ways he had more force than she. 
This morning she had not realized this, 
she had felt his limitations so clearly. 
Now, though thwarted, he did not seem 
helpless. He was indifferent to the gath- 
ering storm which buffeted her — in this 
merely physical advantage there was a 
solace — it seemed as if he were not yet at 
the end of his expedients. She did not 
formulate this — she did not even know 
that she felt it. She was conscious only 
of her own helplessness. Now and then 
she tried desperately to shake off the 
whole nightmare, and come back to clear- 


248 AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 

ness and safety and her own cool mastery 
of personal relations. 

The bitterness of defeat ! There was 
nothing like it. It was something she had 
not known before — this crushing knowl- 
edge that she had dissolved what no 
amount of feminine tact could weld togeth- 
er again, — that there was no longer any 
veil of subtlety or self-deception ; it had 
been torn away and left them all face to 
face with facts. Oh, the torture of the 
irrevocable ! Had anybody ever written 
anything about the torture of the irrevoca- 
ble ? Of course that was what everybody 
had always written about, only they had 
other names for it. 

An exclamation from Leslie roused her. 
The little boat had careened to the water’s 
edge and must have taken in some water. 
Was it any nearer? Yes, a little, but still 
so far off. And this dreadful wind blow- 


AJ\r HOUR'S PROMISE, 249 

ing always. She had never hated anything 
as she did that wind. In the morning she 
had exulted in its freedom, now it seemed 
as if it would drive her mad. Too late? 
Of course it is too late. “ Did you ever 
hear of anybody regretting a thing too 
early, or just in time ? That is what re- 
gret means, that it is too late.” Who was 
it said that ? Oh, Bertha, in One Ad- 
ministration.” 

Antoinette,” exclaimed Miss George, 
at her side, '*she is certainly coming in.” 

Antoinette had turned her eyes away 
for a few moments ; she could not watch 
the boat, the odds against it were too 
heavy. Now, as she followed the direc- 
tion of Miss Georges gaze, she could 
easily distinguish Altamera at the tiller. 
The rudder-ropes around her waist, with 
her strong little hands she managed the 
sail, watching each wave as it came toward 


250 HOUR'S PROMISE, 

her and lifted the craft as if it had been a 
floating shingle. She came in swiftly now, 
having left behind her the cross-currents 
and more difficult sailing beyond. So fast 
and straight she kept her course that it 
seemed as if she would be driven far up 
the beach. Antoinette felt as if she should 
scream with the sense of relief. Miss 
George was at the water’s edge with 
clasped hands and eager eyes. Leslie had 
stepped into the row-boat and was pulling 
out to meet her at the moorings. She 
could not sail away from him here, if she* 
had wished to attempt it. It was no easy 
matter even in the miniature harbor to 
fasten the sail-boat and transfer its freight. 
If they had not both been experienced in 
such matters it would have been impossible 
without help. 

Antoinette watched Altamera as, without 
a look at Leslie or his outstretched hand. 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


251 


she steadied herself with an oar and sprang 
lightly from one boat to the other, and 
then waited for Owen to secure the one 
she had left. 

'‘Why, are you there, Cousin Lena?” 
she called out gayly, as he pulled to the 
landing-place. “I reckon you all have 
been right scared about me.” 

Owen said something in a low tone. 
Antoinette caught the sound of his voice, 
but Altamera neither answered nor appar- 
ently heeded. As the keel grated on the 
sand Altamera spoke again : 

“ It was mighty nice out there. Cousin 
Lena,” she asserted, “ and windy sure 
enough. But I wasn’t coming in before I 
was ready.” 

This time she glanced at Leslie an in- 
stant. Then she stood on the beach, grace- 
ful, self-poised, as ever, blown and tumbled 
by the wind, wet with the spray, but calm 


252 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


and apparently a little surprised that Lena 
should grasp her hands and kiss her on 
both cheeks. To Antoinette it seemed 
suddenly that the whole situation had been 
madly overstrained. Her own mood of 
fifteen minutes ago — how unnatural it had 
been ! Altamera had gone out sailing in 
rough water, and was perfectly capable of 
bringing herself back safe, as she had 
done. Not two weeks before she had done 
the same thing. To be sure, Leslie had 
been with her, but he had laughingly as- 
serted on their return that he had had 
nothing to do but guard against fire, his 
cigarette being the only thing entrusted 
to his care. 

How melodramatic had been the whole 
scene and her own share in it ! Yet she 
was trembling from head to foot, and the 
laugh at her own fears, that was forcing 
itself to her lips, was hysterical ; she knew 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 253 

that and controlled it. Owen, who had 
not spoken to Altamera since his unre- 
garded words on the boat, now came up 
and stood beside them. Miss George had 
walked on ; she, too, felt the dangerous 
emotion of reaction. 

Come, all of you,” she called back. 

Altamera looked up swiftly into the two 
grave faces before her, both pale, Antoi- 
nette's with tightly closed lips she could 
just keep from quivering, Leslie’s inscruta- 
ble, saying nothing. I reckon,” she said 
slowly, in full, sweet tones — I reckon you 
all thought I was going to commit suicide.” 

Antoinette started. 

Altamera ! ” she exclaimed involuntarily. 

Owen did not speak ; he waited for Alta- 
mera to go on. “ Well, I wasn’t,” she 
added. '' You aren’t either of you worth 
it.” Then she went swiftly on and joined 
her cousin. 


254 


AJV HOUR'S PROMISE. 


Antoinette stood a moment motionless, 
white and startled. 

“ So even Altamera can be brutal, after 
all,” said Leslie quietly. Antoinette 
dropped her head in her hands and 
sobbed. It was the first time he had 
ever seen her cry. There was no one 
else on the lonely beach to see, the dark- 
ness had fallen very fast in the last few 
moments. 

“ My darling, I can not bear this,” cried 
Leslie, bending over her. “ All the rest has 
been nothing to the pain of this ! I will 
not have you cry,” he said passionately. 
Before she could protest he had drawn her 
into his arms and held her a moment, but 
she broke away from him. 

“ Do not touch me ! ” she exclaimed. 

Do not come near me !” Her sobs came 
fast, but she held them back to speak. 
^‘Do not ever speak to me again — ever 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


255 


— ever ! I will never hear you say you love 
me,” and she stamped passionately on the 
hard sand. “ I do not love you,” she went 
on. “ You do not love me ! ” 

“ Antoinette, I will not be perjured even 
by your lips.” 

“ It is not love to hurt people and be 
treacherous and blind, and weak, and— com 
temptible ! It is not love to be any of those 
things. We are not ” — and she spoke with 
bitter emphasis, Altamera is right — we are 
not worth it.” 

With a sudden gesture of dismissal she 
turned away, but Owen was by her side 
instantly. She paused, thrilled with in- 
dignation which reached to her fingers’ 
ends. 

I will neither touch you nor speak to 
you,” said Leslie quietly ; “ but I am going 
to walk home with you.” 


256 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


Up at the cottage, Miss George and Alta- 
mera were sitting in front of the open fire, 
driving off the chill of the storm they had 
both been defying. 

“ Why did you frighten us all so, child ?” 
asked Lena. “ It was a dreadful thing that 
you did.” 

“ I didn’t mean to frighten you, Cousin 
Lena,” answered Altamera, pinning up her 
ruffied hair. “ I reckon I didn’t know right 
well myself why I went. I couldn’t think 
of anything else, and I wasn’t quite sure 
about that. But I was sure when I was out 
there,” and she laughed a little. “ I had to 
manage that boat.” 

There was silence a few moments. 

“And if you hadn’t managed it ?” Miss 
George said in a low tone. 

“ I thought of that,” said Altamera 
slowly. “ I thought of that first. But after 
a while — why then I reckoned I could,” and 


AN- HOUR'S PROMISE, 


257 


she said no more about the problem she 
had faced that afternoon. 

“ Leslie must have gone down with An- 
toinette,’ she said tranquilly, after a while. 

“Yes,” answered Miss George. She was 
half afraid of what might come next. “It 
is dark, you know.” 

“ That’s what he ought to have done, 
anyway,” asserted Altamera with gentle 
decision. 

“Yes, I suppose so.” Lena spoke with 
some hesitation. 

“ Why, you know he ought. Cousin 
Lena. His place isn’t here any more, you 
know.” 

There was another pause. The firelight 
flickered wildly as the wind blew down the 
chimney. Miss George gazed at the 
younger woman, in wonder at her calm- 
ness. Not thus had she borne the wreck 
of her own life — so she had called it then. 


25 ^ AM HOUR'S PROMISE. 

She felt that wreck was too shattered a 
term to apply to this situation. 

“ Our family is not fortunate in its love 
affairs,” she said to herself bitterly. '‘And 
Leslie Owen is not fated to bring us hap- 
piness.” 

“ Cousin Lena,” said Altamera, throwing 
back her head, “ a month from to-night I 
reckon I’ll be down in Georgia.” 


CHAPTER XL 


Laertes. — Forward not permanent, sweet not lasting, 
The perfume and suppliance of a minute, 

No more. 

Ophelia. — No more but so ? 

— Hamlet, 

Does Truth sound bitter as one at first believes ? 

— The Lost Mistress. 

It was more than a year later that Owen 
traveled over the Southern railroad again. 

Apparently nothing had grown, or 
moved, or been rooted up since his 
journey of several years before. The 
muffled trees still grew knee-deep in 
muddy swamps, the scattered houses were 
as lonely, the long reaches of forest as 
desolate, and the careless negroes as 
picturesque. This time, however, he did 
not lean listlessly against the window-pane 

and fret against the slow hours and the 
259 


26 o 


AN MOURNS PROMISE. 


long miles. The sun was shining, albeit 
low in the west, and the golden rays came 
in level with the car windows, giving a 
transient gleam to the Southern scenery, 
and possibly to his own spirit. 

'' Antoinette,” he said, leaning forward, 

the next station is Embree. To the 
right you will see the post-office, and in 
front of its door I first saw Altamera, on 
horseback, waiting for a letter.” 

Antoinette looked up from her book, 
and smiled as she closed it. Her profile, 
as she turned from him and looked out of 
the window, was as beautiful as ever. Af- 
ter a married life of two months, Leslie 
still found her eyes inscrutable. She was 
perfectly dressed, and the poise of her 
head and figure were as exquisite as 
when Owen first saw her in a ball-room. 
Against the dark cloth of the traveling 
cloak lay a large bunch of fragrant yellow 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 


261 


jessamine, which Leslie had brought into 
the train at the last stopping-place. The 
train slackened its speed as they came in 
sight of the long, lonely road, twisting into 
the forest. Another curve, and the old 
post-office was before them, and the train 
stopped. Owen felt like rubbing his hand 
across his eyes. There sat the old black 
postmaster in the doorway with the same 
air of gentle toleration for the swift im- 
patience of iron and steam. There sat the 
charmed circle of adherents who thought 
that the whole duty of man was polite 
conversation. There, on a horse, which 
seemed the only restless creature, sat 
Altamera waiting for the mail. 

Antoinette did not start. 

I think I expected to see her,” she said 
quietly. 

But Lena George said she had not 
been in Embree for months,” exclaimed 


262 


AN HOUR*S PROMISE. 


Owen ; '' that she would, perhaps, never 
go back there.” 

''Very likely,” replied Antoinette, "and 
so much for your masculine logic. As for 
me I did not care what Lena George said. 
There is Altamera, and I expected to see 
her.” 

"And, by Jove ! there is my friend the 
doctor. I must speak to him,” and he 
rose. 

"Leslie!” said Antoinette, looking up 
into his face in amazement ; " how can you 
think of doing anything in such wretched 
taste ? Besides, do you not see ?” 

Obeying her gesture, Leslie resumed his 
seat. The train had already begun to 
move slowly. There was the long, dark 
Southerner who had watched with him 
beside Robert Morton’s death-bed. He 
strolled, with that same lazy swinging 
gait, Owen remembered so well, from the 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE, 263 

wood behind the office, the bridle of his 
horse over his arm, and joined Altamera. 
She looked down at him, smiling as he 
spoke to her. There was a light of utter 
contentment in his eyes as they fell from 
hers to the moving train and carelessly 
watched it pass out of sight, little knowing 
how much certain lives in it had entered 
into his own. 

And Altamera — Altamera looked at the 
attenuated mail bag indifferently ; possi- 
bly she did not care for letters. So he 
with his hand on her horse’s back, look- 
ing up into her eyes, she with one 
hand on her reins, the other falling idly 
by her side, with her sweet smile and 
her half-drooped head, they passed out of 
Owen’s sight. He almost wondered if he 
had ever seen them anywhere else. 

'' I felt sure it would all come right, 
Antoinette,” he said, looking at her with 


264 


AJV HOUR'S PROMISE. 


an expression he felt to be permissible in 
the duskiness of the woods they had 
entered, in which expressions were not to 
be classified across the car ; “ I knew such 
happiness as ours could not bring harm to 
any one else.” 

“You were always an optimist, Leslie,” 
answered Antoinette, with a little sigh. 

“ But she is happy,” he persisted. “You 
can not doubt that ? And he is happy 
too — and he deserves happiness more than 
I do.” 

“Yes, she is happy,” assented Antoi- 
nette, lifting her jessamine and breathing 
its fragrance. “ I do not know that I ever 
doubted that she would be, after that first 
day — if I did then. Only,” and she smiled 
gravely, “ I have been defeated once, and 
since then I have believed in defeat.” 

“And I,” he said, with an intonation that 
the passenger across the car would cer- 


AN HOUR'S PROMISE. 265 

tainly have noticed had it reached him, 
“ have loved once, and since then I have 
believed in love.” 

She did not answer him. She only 
turned from the fading light and met his 
eyes for a moment, and then, leaning her 
cheek on the pane, gazed out again on the 
changing sky. 

She was listening to him, was she 
not ? ” he said a minute later, as if it was a 
matter of some importance. 

''Certainly she was listening to him. 
Women always listen,” laughed Antoinette. 
" Did you think a woman never listened to 
any man but you ? ” 

" It was so long before you listened to 
me,” he murmured, " and I had hoped 
mine was not an isolated case.” 

" I listened to you the first time you 
ever spoke to me,” she answered. 


THE END. 






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General Manager. Traffic Manager. Qen’l Pass. Agent. 



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